Usagi Drop 03 — Playdate with Grandma

Usagi Drop,
You're too young to be my grandmother!

There’s no better way to get on the good side of old ladies than by calling them young. Good work, Rin! You are already a master of social graces at such a young age!

This episode’s main focus was on Rin’s interactions with adults. She’s very shy, but more outgoing once she gets to know people. I can relate, since I used to be quite similar, always hiding behind my parents.

Rin won over her grandparents quite easily, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It seems like her aunt will be a bit harder, but with the grandparents on her side they will browbeat their daughter into submission.

Rin also seems to have built up quite the fear of death at an early age. For a little girl whose father just died, this isn’t all that surprising. It seemed that Daikichi was able to ease her fears a little bit. Rin is also in an awkward stage where she still wets the bed, but is old enough to be embarrassed about it.

Daikichi returns to his grandfather’s house to search for clues as well. He looked like a thief in this scene, he’s lucky none of the neighbors spotted him. I’m guessing that the “maid” is probably Rin’s mother, although this seems to be too obvious a conclusion to actually be correct.

Daikichi has won me over in a big way in these first few episodes. In a medium where everyone gushes over how “kind” boys are for being nice to attractive girls their own age, Daikichi’s kindness is the real deal. He basically put his entire life on hold to take care of a little girl he had no obligation towards. He isn’t the impulsive or rash type either, which makes this all the more admirable. And he’s done an excellent job of raising her so far, although it’s only been a week.

 

A Seasonal Review: Spring 2011

Seasonal Review, ,

I’m a bit late due to my trip, but better late than never. I’ve loosely ranked this past season’s show’s below, starting with the worst and ending with the best. I’m only including TV series that I watched past the first episode. Overall, I think it was a pretty decent season. There were the usual disasters, but we had a good crop of shows on the other side of the spectrum as well.

25. Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox (dropped)
It’s like Koihime Musou but in the Sengoku period and with some half-assed attempt at time travel. It also somehow manages to be even more boring than Koihime Musou.

24. Hoshizora e Kakaro Hashi – 4.5
The unbelievably generic galge adaptation of the season. This series represents everything I hate about anime.

23. Maria-Holic Alive (haven’t finished)
Another SHAFT sequel. Why do they keep pumping these out? I can’t think of a single one that has been half decent. Even Zetsubou-sensei and ef had crappy sequels. Why do they even try? It doesn’t help that the original season wasn’t all that great either.

22. A-Channel (haven’t finished)
I want to like this, I do… but it just hasn’t really clicked for me. A-Channel is all about cute girls doing cute things, but it just lacks the charm and polish that K-On had. The animation may be part of the problem – if your anime is about cute girls, I feel like you should at least have them look human, not with humongous heads. Although it works in Himawari Sketch, so… maybe it’s just this particular style. I’m about halfway though with A-Channel, and I intend to finish it eventually.

21. Dororon Enma-kun Meramera (haven’t finished)
I actually liked the first few episodes of this, but kind of forgot about it. The toilet humor just isn’t my favorite thing. I will finish it eventually though.

20. Astarotte no Omocha – 6.0
Had an interesting premise, but devolved into a stereotypical harem. The execution was solid, if uninspired, but the idea of a romance between a stepfather and an (unknowing) stepdaughter is too much for me.

19. Hidan no Aria – 6.0
The latest installment of Shakugan no Shana. Aria is one of the more annoying Rie Kugimiya characters. I’d rank her right below Rose from Dragon Crisis. The plot is a mess, and they don’t do a very good job at fitting everything in the limited amount of time of a single season. On the brighter side, Kinji isn’t too bad for a protagonist, and Riko is fairly entertaining.

18. Dog Days – 6.25
I’ll admit, I was extremely disappointed by how Dog Days turned out. Granted, it had one of the dumbest premises imaginable, but in the first few episodes it managed to not take itself too seriously and have a lot of fun. The initial wars, the economics of war, petting and playing catch were all good fun. Eclair is win. But after the first few episodes, the creators tried to make us take this ridiculous world seriously, and failed miserably. No one thought for a moment that the princess would die, or cared about her and Shinku’s love story. This also suffered from poor direction and wasted time. Were two episodes of Shinku saying goodbye really necessary? And the characters waste so much time exchanging pleasantries.

17. Hen Zemi – 6.5
It was entertaining, but didn’t have the “charm” of the OVA. Most of the entertainment value from this show comes from throwing all social norms out the window, and this was beginning to get old towards the end. Going with half length episodes was an excellent decision.

16. The World God Only Knows II – 6.5
Somehow this adaptation just doesn’t succeed at capturing the humor of the manga. They spend too much time on each girl, and actually try to take each of their stories seriously (they even take Elsie seriously, whose only use in the manga was drooling over fire trucks). I enjoy the manga because of Keima, not because of his captures. The anime has wandered too close to the galge adaptations it was meant to parody.

15. C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – 6.75
A creative setting that was wasted on an incoherent plot. They try to use economics terms, but it’s just gibberish, and they make up the rules of the world as they go along. The creators really didn’t seem to know where they were headed. And the lead characters were annoying.

14. 30-sai no Token Haiiku – 7.0
30-sai isn’t going to make anyone’s favorite list, but it was a solid comedy. The short episode length helped it retain interest, and the characters were memorable. For a show about helping people lose their virginity, it has its head in the gutter surprisingly little.

13. Gintama’ (still airing)
The continuation of Gintama has picked up again after the downward spiral at the end of the first airing. The thing with these episodes though is that they are hit or miss. The Otose arc and the more serious parts were great, but I do feel that the comedy isn’t quite at the level of the first 100 episodes. That’s a tough standard to meet though.

12. Softenni – 7.25
Softenni is fanservice done right. The show’s ridiculous sense of humor is hilarious even without the fanservice. And with some brazen and ridiculous fanservice on top of that it’s only better. Oh, and the national champion helps too. She needs her own show.

11. Ao no Exorcist (still airing)
Ao no Exorcist is a solid shounen series. It has some good characterizations and a promising setting. The problem that I see is one that befalls most shounen shows: the plot is moving at a snail’s pace. They’ve been training at school for the entire first season, and the only true villain we’ve seen so far is Satan, who hasn’t even appeared since the first episode.

10. Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko – 7.75
Shaft’s moeblob offering for the season. If you like cute girls being cute you’ll like this one. I’m ambivalent. I find most of the characters to be a bit on the obnoxious side. The production is excellent, however.

9. Deadman Wonderland – 8.25
This has a beautifully dark setting, with a plot and action scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat. My main complaint is that the main character is downright pathetic, and remains so even in this terribly dark and deadly setting.

8. Tiger and Bunny (still airing)
So far, I’ve been quite impressed with Tiger and Bunny. It takes the superhero genre and turns it into a competition (which raises some interesting ethical questions). I love Kotetsu, because he certainly isn’t your usual high school boy protagonist- he even has a daughter. And his relationship with Bunny is quite dynamic. This series also does well at mixing the serious and non-serious moments. My biggest complaint is that the first season’s villains left much to be desired. Except for the midboss, they never seemed like much of a threat. And the midboss turned into an anticlimax of sorts.

7. Ore Tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai – 8.5
One of the best galge adaptations that has come out in a long time (if not ever). Usually in these kind of things the male lead is pathetically weak, but here the lead male(s) are even more interesting than their female counterparts. The humor and the fanservice are excellent as well. The first episode is awful though, you may want to skip it.

6. Gosick – 8.0
Gosick’s first season was mediocre, but the second season was great. So my overall rating isn’t particularly reflective of how it was for this season, which this list is ordered by.  We had an adventure story with some mystery, which was both grand and endearing. It helped that Kujo finally gained some minimum level of intelligence after the first season.

5. Nichijou (still airing)
The funniest show of the season, it made me laugh out loud every week. It’s just so over the top ridiculous. Half the fun is seeing what kind of insane overreaction Yuuko and Mio will do next. That cube skit was legendary. I don’t like the segments with Nano and Hakase quite as much as the school segments, but with Nano going to school now, this won’t be an issue for the second season.

4. Hanasaku Iroha (still airing)
Sometimes Hanasaku Iroha will have you sitting on the edge of your seat with its drama. At other times it will have you laughing out loud. And sometimes you’ll be HNNGing over how cute it is. It’s a jack of many trades, and honestly it’s pretty darn good at all of them.

3. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai – 9.25
Ano Hana was the best straight-up drama of the season. It’s quite the tearjerker, and has some of the best characters of the season. Bring tissues. The final episode was a bit of a let-down, however.

2. Hyouge Mono (still airing)
A show about drinking tea. This is one of the most manly shows I have ever seen. If you haven’t watched it, do so now. The only  reason I’m not blogging it is because of the slow (but steady) subbing. (a big huzzah to the subbers!)

1. Stein’s; Gate (still airing)
Time travel, conspiracy theories, mad scientists, evil laughter, smooth and entertaining banter. What more could I ask for?

Feel welcome to share your thoughts on the past season’s shows in the comments.

Steins; Gate 16 — Goodbye Casualty

Steins; Gate,

I was very disappointed to hear that Suzuha never got married. Although there are always extra-marital affairs to keep my hope alive. I was hoping that Suzuha would turn out to be Daru’s mother and we would get some infinite recursion. In the limit case, will their genes become identical?

This was a great episode all around. As predicted, Daru turns out to be Suzuha’s father (but the mother is still a secret – my guess is Moeka). But the part that was not expected was that the only person who figures this out is Mayuri. So far, Mayuri has come across as the slowest and dullest of the lot, but here, she’s the only one who can see what is obvious to the viewers. And I think this makes a lot of sense. Okarin and Christina think too much like scientists and look at facts and specific details. Daru and Suzuha are too personally involved to see anything clearly. Mayuri is the only one who can use something vague like the idea that “they look good together” to reach the conclusion that is right in front of everyone.

I complained in the earlier episodes that Mayuri was one of the weaker characters and seemed like a rather standard moeblob / damsel in distress, but this is simply not the case. She’s slow, childish, and less witty than Okabe and Christina, but she certainly isn’t an idiot. She’s probably the most level-headed lab member. The creators of Steins; Gate are doing an excellent job at the characterizations.

They also threw a great curve ball with Suzuha’s trip to the past becoming ineffective due to memory loss. Getting to see what happened to her and her relationship with Mr. Braun were great. (This brings to mind something else: Mr. Braun’s daughter. Who is her mother?! Could it be Suzuha?) But the part where this twist paid off the most was for Okabe’s decision to send the D-mail. You can see clearly his transformation from eccentric mad scientist to founding father of the resistance, willing to make everyone but himself forget Suzuha to save Mayuri and defeat CERN.

Gosick Review — B-

Reviews,

Kujo transfers from Japan to Europe to become a student, at a time when great changes are afoot in the world. At the top of the library tower, he meets a petite girl with blond hair who seems almost like a fairy, named Victorique. He plays Watson to her Holmes (complete with pipe) as she “assembles the fragments of Chaos” and solves mysteries, often involving fairy tales and the occult. Later on, she unravles the story of her own past.

Gosick is a tough series to review, because what I should really do is write two reviews: one for each half. The two halves come across as completely different. In the first, Victorique and Kujo attend class and solve random mysteries. The second half is a set of more closely connected mysteries revealing the secrets behind Victorique’s birth and the future of Europe.

The thing is, most of the mysteries in the first half are plain dumb. It’s painfully obvious who the criminal is for most of them. Sherlock Holmes is a genius, and this is illustrated by putting him on a completely different level from Watson. But Watson is also very intelligent. In Gosick, they try to make Victorique be a genius by comparing her with Kujo. But Kujo is an idiot (at least in the first half). To top it off, the side characters are annoying: the classmate in love with Kujo, the clumsy teacher with glasses, Victorique’s brother who needs her to solve all his cases for him and whose hair is shaped like a unicorn horn.

At this point I was toying with the idea of dropping the show. But then everything completely changed. They dropped the random obvious mysteries, and Gosick turned into a top-notch adventure series, exploring the story of Victorique’s past and her relationship with Kujo. Sometimes shows use the first half to better develop their characters and setting for the finale. But I can’t really convince myself that this was the case with Gosick. The initial episodes added very little. And oddly enough, the ending felt rushed. So they didn’t need to pad for time. I’m honestly not sure what the creators were thinking for the first half.

But the second half is great. The adventure is exciting, all the characters are fleshed out (even the guy with unicorn hair becomes a non-joke), and the mysteries are interesting. We even get some good politics and a bit of romance. Overall, I would probably rate the second half a 9, but the first half only a 7.

  • Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Huge divide between the first and second half.
  • Characters – 8 / 10 – Most of the cast is well fleshed-out in the second half. Kujo’s classmates remain fairly weak, however. Kujo is too dumb in the first half.
  • Production – 8 / 10 – Consistent (this is Bones after all) but I can’t help but feel even the animation improved in the second half. This may be my imagination.
  • Overall – B-

Recommendations – Kamisama no Memochou, Dantalian no Shoka (for more moeblob detectives)

Hanasaku Iroha 16 — Filmmaking

Hanasaku Iroha,

In this episode we took a step back from the heavy drama of the previous episodes for a return to the more lighthearted slice of life as the inn prepares to film a movie. It’s probably good to have a balance of both seriousness and more lighthearted moments, and Hanasaku Iroha has done pretty well in this regard. The biggest disappointment for me this week was the lack of Yuina, but I’m sure she’ll be back.

And for a surprise, Ren gets the starring role for the film! Ohana, Tomoe and Nako begin fantasizing about what role they will have in the film. Nako’s fantasy of being a spy who is an ex-Olympic swimmer was hilarious. Minchi will have none of it, and wants to be a chef in the movie. But she knows that Tohru would look good in the starring role. We even get an intense boy’s love scene! Pretty clear who the seme and uke are here.

Aside from the fun slice of life antics, this episode did a good job at developing Ohana’s uncle and Takako further. Ohana’s mother really did have a big influence on him, and it must have been somewhat of a shock when she decided not to run the inn. It seems like Takako is filling part of the role for him that his sister used to. And I certainly never would have predicted that he once had ambitions to direct a movie.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there may be more to this movie than meets the eye. Takako and her friend seemed rather evasive in letting anyone meet the director and writer. And why would they be so interested in having the inn members take part? Plus, why choose Kissuiso in the first place? My guess is that someone we know is involved, perhaps Ohana’s mother? The grandmother did seem to agree rather readily as well, so perhaps she is in on the plan too. I’m probably just reading too much into things though.