anime viewing

[piranha]

since hibernation season has started and i can't seem to get myself to write anything interesting, yet i am more likely to do that occasionally if i write something at all, a report on my current anime viewing.

• bleach 13
  
• death note 26 (stalled because of shark jumping) -- those of you who've seen it know which shark i mean. i cannot get myself to continue watching, i am still majorly pissed that this was done. i'll eventually return, because i love the art (obata takeshi remains one of my favourite mangaka).
  
• DN angel 26 (done) -- this turned out better than i had anticipated. i wrote a separate review that i've got to post.
  
• fushigi yuugi 4 (dropped)
  
• gankutsuou 3
  
• get backers 40
  
• suzumiya haruhi no yuutsu 14 (done) -- haruhi is a first year student in high school who does not care for 'ordinary' human beings. she's optimistic, effervescent, eccentric, unpredictable, has a keen interest in aliens, espers and time travelers, and is easily bored. which is not a good thing, since unbeknownst to her, she can change reality. best anime i've seen all year. best from a technical standpoint, that is, but the story isn't bad either. grab it if you want to see a state of the art showpiece with a lot of fun. (it's licensed in english as "the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya".) i haven't read the manga and i am not sure i will, even though it's seinen; maybe. oh, if you watch it, watch it in chronological order, which is different from the episode order. IMO nothing is gained by watching it achronically, it's just confusing.
  
  two animation samples:
  god knows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avm7x0zj6nE
  hare hare yukai, closing sequence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HpAE-QcQA
  
  and if you love the weirdness that is japan, here's that closing dance done by the actual seiyuu (voice actors) of the anime. one look at the audience might tell you how big this was in japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMNZTF4amvw
  
  i'm really looking forward to the second season.
  
  
• kaikan phrase 44 (done) -- it's shoujo, but initially that doesn't show much -- the anime concerns itself with the life of 5 guys who get together to form a rock band. i watched this because of its advertised slashability, and the good cast (yuki: miki shinichiro, santa: sakurai takahiro, towa: chiba susumu, atsuro: suzumura kenichi, ralph: nobuo tobita). quite decent until episode 33, then it started to annoy me more and more. good j-rock. it's even fairly realistic at the start, and it has likeable characters. and surprisingly it doesn't get insipid the moment the love interest for the lead singer shows up, in fact contrary to most annoying shoujo there are no stupid games played between sakuya (mr hottie lead singer) and aine (shy high school girl with a talent for poetry), and i really like how the relationship develops slowly because they end up working together (she writes the lyrics, he composes). but after episode 33 the romance becomes annoying, with the usual stupid miscommunications. it recovers, but then the rest of the anime becomes rather unrealistic, and there is no more charactr development. *meh*, too bad.
  
  people consider this highly slashable, but i don't -- having several good-looking guys isn't enough for me. if sakuya didn't have a female love interest, then yes, we could slash sakuya pretty much with anyone else cause they all have interesting feelings regarding him. but sakuya and aine are the strongest relationship by far. santa hasn't gotten yumi out of his system, towa and atsuro get a canon wink but i see atsuro as pre-sexual, and yuki with whom? maybe towa, but there's really nothing special there; they're both quiet and calm. i was more interested in the rock group than in smexing them up. i won't read the manga because from everything i've heard it's very much more shoujo and less focussed on the band and its music.
  
  compare animation quality with suzumiya haruhi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS0BsuaETmk -- ok, so this is a bad rip to start with (i don't have any better), but not even close, eh.
  
• kamichu! 8
  
• kare kano 16
  
• kino no tabi 1
  
• kyou kara maou 7
  
• meine liebe 13 (done) -- follows the lives of students at an elite academy of a fictional european country in the 1930s. character design by yuki kaori -- nice, but not even close to what she does in manga. the pseudo german had me in stitches. get a load of these names: the country is called Kuchen (cake), and then we have the gentlemen Orpherus Fürst von Marmelade nahe Gorz, Eduard Markgraf von Sekt nahe Braunschweig, Camus Pfalzgraf von Silvaner Lüneburg. it's a relief when plain Naoji Ishizuki appears. fine cast -- orphe: sakurai takahiro, ludwig: seki toshihiko, ed: seki tomokazu, naoji: ishida akira, isaac: koyasu takehito, camus: hoshi souichirou. the plot develops very slowly, and turns out to be political intrigue. there's decent character development right along with it. the music is very good, between classical and a little jazzy, never boring. the animation is unfortunately nowhere as good; the characters' faces suffer from a lack of expression, sometimes the only thing that moves for many seconds is the mouth, open, close, open, close. do NOT watch this right after suzumiya haruhi no yuutsu.
  
  THIS is slashable, to the max. which is probably not surprising, being as it is based on a dating sim, and they've completely left the main female character out of the anime. there is loads and loads of delicious subtext.
  
  animation sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrp79PpPei0
  
  
• meine liebe wieder 13 (done) -- sequel. more of the same, with somewhat more danger and action thrown into it. i liked it as well as, if not a little better than the first series.
  
• aa megami-sama 4 (dropped)
  
• prince of tennis 75
  
• princess nine 17
  
• saiunkoku monogatari 30
  
• saiyuki 2
  
• vision of escaflowne 4 (dropped)
  
• X 7
  
• xxxholic 24 (done) -- watanuki is a high school student plagued by youkai, supernatural creatures. one day while trying to escape another attack, he stumbles into the house of yuuko, a beautiful mysterious woman with esoteric capabilities, the most pertinent of which appears to be that she can grant any wish. watanuki would very much to be rid of the pesky youkai. however, there is a price -- since watanuki is skilled with cooking and housework, he'll have to work it off in trade.
  
  watanuki has a crush on himawatari, who seems blissfully unaware and uninterested, and the third wheel on his wagon is doumeki whom he sees as a dangerous rival (but who is, as it soon becomes clear to anyone but watanuki, much more interested in him than in anyone else). and yuuko spares no effort to push them together, for her own amusement, or maybe more. since this is CLAMP, i am sure nothing will ever actually happen, because they're awful teases when it comes to BL.
  
  yuuko is an interesting character, at the same time mischievous, free-spirited, a lush, a hedonist, and wise beyond this space-time continuum. :) watanuki gets a little on my nerves, but straight-man (ha ha!) doumeki makes up for that. there is quite some depth hidden under the superdeformed joking around, watanuki does a lot of growing up over the course of the series. this is my favourite of all the CLAMP anime i've seen so far, it feels less manipulative and hollow (despite the teasing). i really like the design; there is some very beautiful art in some of the episodes.
  
  the first season is licensed in english. work has begun on a second season; i'm looking forward to it.
  
  some funny moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKUtXQl5oU
  first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkNWFHEJqbQ
  
  
• yamato nadeshiko shichi henge 16