Natsume Yuujinchou San 04

By on January 29, 2012

Natsume Yuujinchou San overall was an excellent season, but I the episode that had the strongest impression on me was episode 4. Main reason that in episode 4, we are given more about Natsume’s more negative past, a pretty big difference compared of what he is experiencing right now.

Within the episode, we were introduced this youkai that lives on a tree, the encounter that Natsume had with this youkai (in the past), and Natsume’s situation during that time. This was pretty interesting since Natsume’s darker past were usually only hinted at but never shown explicitly, and it is more clear of what Natsume’s fears were when we actually how badly treated he was in the past. As for the youkai, while no much character was given to her, she seemed to usually be alone, and had a desire to communicate with Natsume, whom she knew that he interact with her.

At core, it was nothing but just a simple tale of the youkai wanting to communicate to Natsume, usually not in the best method (scaring him), something that was seen before (the youkai that looked like a human and conversed with the young Natsume before a human neighbor commenting of how Natsume is all alone). But two scenes stood out for me:

One was when Natsume stopped walking the path that the youkai was situated at, the youkai decided to transform to a cat to find Natsume. Upon finding, the youkai approached him, and Natsume saw and picked her up. First she commented how warm he was and how he can make such a gentle expression, and how she liked to stay like that (be hugged by Natsume) forever, a clear indicator that she desire to at have the company of others (at least Natsume). And then the young Natsume saids how he wanted to be alone ASAP, as a direct opposite of what she was thinking then. This absurd wish and this disconnection between them was well, a bit tearjerk-worthy (the fact that she started to tear up didn’t help). O and then soon after Natsume leaves, she herself became disappointed at humans, even though she still longs to communicate to them.

The second scene that stood out was when Natsume went back and met the youkai on the tree in present time. To see him smile so cheerfully, even though it is something we know he is capable of doing, was really heartwarming after seeing his struggles and personality from his past. This episode was able to see a simple view of how much Natsume have changed through the years, which made me even appreciate his current personality even more. This is also why I’m looking forward to the upcoming Natsume Yuujinchou Shi episode (ep5), since it seems to deal more of Natsume’s past also.

This episode all boils down to comparisons: human vs youkai (as always), past Natsume vs current Natsume, youkai’s curiosity toward Natsume vs Natsume rejecting all youkais etc…, and heck, it works.

If anything, a tsundere youkai is always fine. And yes, I think the youkai on the tree is pretty moe.

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Day 12: Holy Grail War

By on December 31, 2011

論王道 / 廢鐵

Fate/Stay Night was good. It showed how Shirou, through the three routes, matured, changing from once idealistic save-everyone that was found in Fate, to ditching of what he once believed in and try to save this one person in expense of putting the whole city in jeopardy as found in Heaven’s Feel; showing Shiou’s internal ideological conflict of trying to live up to his ideals or to give up, knowing that it would be impossible to achieve. And there are also several more magicians that either support Shirou or go against him. Then I watched Fate/Zero.

There is nothing wrong to call the 5th Holy Grail War a war, just as we can call Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War or Anglo-Zanzibar War (lasted for less than 38 minutes a war. Those are all wars in that one side had declared war against the other side (which usually also involves the sending of troops against the other nation). But just as Anglo-Zanzibar War is nothing like World War I, 5th Holy Grail War is nothing like 4th Holy Grail War, in terms of the difference in what is at stake, the players in the War, and the outcome of the War.

First, let’s start of with the players in the War, the 7 masters. In 4th War, the crash of ideologies, personality, goals, and desires of the masters are stressed from the very beginning, which is evident from the anime extending the first episode to a hour so that it can cover the reasons that each master had entered into the War. The 4th War paints a more dynamic conflict between the masters, with some masters not going into the War to win, but just have a direct conflict with another master, and one trying to win just for academics curiosity, one trying to win for skill showing, one being forced to enter without a reason, and one trying to win to save the world. With all different personality and ways of battling, different goals etc..it shows that the 4th War was not only fought by two or three side, but each master was being an individual side, creating more messy battles. Compare that to 5th War, where everyone just either want to befriend Shirou, or has an evil agenda so that Shirou can go against it. Hence, compared to 5th War, the 4th War has a lot of weight to each master, who believing on their own beliefs or goals, was willing to risk their lives in order to try to prove that their beliefs is correct or attain their goal.

Then, there are also the ideologies that each servant holds. That was rarely touched upon in 5th War except for Saber and Archer. Yet for Fate/Zero, we have a whole episode where three of the servants came together and actually discussed about their way of living, an indication of the servant’s ideologies are also at being battled against in the 4th War. Wither it is Rider, Saber and Archer discussion of the ruling style of a king, or Caster’s and Ryunosuke’s chilling discussion at episode 13, or the past life conflict that was hinted for Lancer, all points to that the servants themselves have their past (living style, beliefs, hopes) at stake in this War also.

The result is that the 4th Holy Grail War is not just one’s personal struggle to mature, but a full blown out war that involves the crashing of ideologies, personality, and goals, with life-changing result for each master if they fail to win in the end.

Also, Fate/Zero anime ended their first season at the start of a massive battle is one of the biggest end-of-season cliffhangers I have ever seen. Now I have to wait impatiently for months before I can even see episode 14. (＃ﾟДﾟ)

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Day 11: BOMBER

By on December 30, 2011

ちらっ / くつ乃

While Macross (watched this year) and Macross Frontier (watched the second movie this year) are both good shows, they are no where exciting as Macross 7.

For main character in Macross 7, Nekki Basara, music is everything. For all the things that he did in the anime, it was to sing and to spread his singing to everyone. Worrying about his life? He is too busy singing to his enemies on the battlefield to care. Kill an enemy in to protect the city? But that would mean that there would be one less audience for his music. Control sticks for controlling the fighter? That would prevent him from singing when piloting the fighter, so let’s use the guitar to control it so that he can sing and fly at the same time. Love Triangle? Too busy with creating and performing music to be involved with that. Having a band member jealous? Too busy singing to a female Protodeviln, trying to make her understand culture, to care. End of the world? His music can prevent that. A fangirl wants to give him flowers since episode 1? Too busy performing to take the flowers. Etc…

He naïve way of trying to solve the battle between Macross 7 and the Protodeviln was, to be honest, was rather annoying at first, since his music wasn’t reaching to the enemies, causing each episode to have the sample structure: enemy attacks, Basara goes to battle and sing, enemy leaves, Basara gets all sad because they left before he can finish his song. But man, once the music had effect to the enemies, and latter the Protodeviln, Basara was such an exciting character to watch. His hot bloodiness character and his passion for music was something that is rarely seen in mecha, or even within any genre of anime. No wonder my friend, a musician and likes stuff like G Gundam, REALLY REALLY likes Basara.

Despite being a mecha show, Macross 7 came across as a show that showed the passion of music that Basara had and the using of music to convey how battles, even ones that are fought between different creatures, are meaningless. While the latter theme is a common theme throughout the Macross franchise, compared to Macross and Macross Frontier, that message was a lot less obvious in other shows than what was conveyed in Macross 7.

Now that I have seen all three, I understand why my friend really liked Macross 7 and why someone would name their aniblog after one of Fire Bomber’s song (wait, what happened to remember16 o_O, it does not exist anymore D:), since even I would put Macross 7 above Macross and Macross Frontier.

LISTEN TO HIS SONG!

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Day 10: KyoAni Delivers

By on December 29, 2011

間違えてない探し / そると

Back in the end of last year, when I read that Kyoto Animation was going to animate Keiichi Arawi’s Nichijou, I decided to do some homework and read up on some Nichijou. On the manga, I found that while the girls still have the head-body ratio similar to an elementary school or kindergarten girl like how Lucky Star was, looking moebloby, but the style of art and jokes were nothing like what Lucky Star had. Using techniques like art shift, it portrayed the day to day events of 3 high school girls of having the wackiness turned up to 11. Yes, it showed many common high school life events like running in the hallway, having to stand outside because of not handing in homework for example, but it added random over-the-top things that made it uncommon. Therefore because of the nature of the manga, I think it would pose a problem for KyoAni, who never was involved in any projects like Nichijou before (their last attempt for Lucky Star banked more on having anime references for jokes than anything). Particularly, I feared that it might end up too much being Lucky Star, being too cute and stuff and not over-the-top enough. Well, I underestimated KyoAni.

Yeah, there were times where the jokes were so weird that I was not able to laugh at it, but each episode there was something that I was able to chuckle at. And comparing to the few chapters that I read to the show, I can fairly say that Kyoto Animation was loyal to the original show. For example, I was really surprised on how well they were able to animate the hallway running scene. Not only that, I didn’t see the kind of fall in quality that other studios (SHAFT) had as the show progressed. Again, Kyoto Animation not only delivered quality adopted anime (now their original sources anime is another story), but also the spirit that was found in the original source.

Now the original source was manga, and hence Kyoto Animation was only bounded by the animation, and therefore had more freedom to deal with stuff like background music, opening, ending and voice actress. And man, did they do a good job with it. With the opening we got this overly random earworm song sung by Hyadain. To be honest, the two opening by Hyadain is not a song that I would like to listen by itself since it was rather weird, but somehow by associating it with Nichijou, not only it is pretty fun to listen (and maybe even sing along), but it also made sense, since it mirrors the over-the-top randomness that is in Nichijou. The ending, well, the first one sounded cute, but the ones starting from second season…it was hard to keep track of, since they were singing different song every time with different people. But right now, just looking at the song list on Wikipedia, apparently they are all school related songs (graduation songs, chorus for elementary kids, folk music [kids likes to sing them?]), which is random in what they choose, but also fitting in that it is related to how the show itself is set in high school. As for the voice actor/actress, how can anyone not like the fact that the cyclical Sakamoto is voiced by none other than Minoru Shiraishi? To add to the awesomeness, how about the Professor being voiced by Hiromi Konno (who voiced Akira in Lucky Star) and a random crow voiced by Daisuke Ono (voiced a crow in Lucky Star, which references to the crow in Air), all just as a treat to the audiences who had watched previous KyoAni show. And I don’t know whose idea it is to have a different voice actor/actress for the previews, but good job, since we get to hear Wakakoto voice as a pair of WOODO CUEBU. And lastly, while I didn’t focus on the background music much, I am reading quite a few bloggers praising the soundtrack. So in all, Kyoto Animation have also done a great job in the sound department.

For the anime itself, it feels like a combination of having the character focus of Azumanga Daioh and wackiness and character size of Pani Poni Dash. While the full cast was rather large, as it included students from more than one class (like Pani Poni Dash), the main focus was still on Mai, Yuuko, Mio, Nano, and to a lesser extend, the Shinonome family (closer to Azumanga Daioh in terms of character focus), which was good, since it felt less all over the place than PPD. Good thing it was also less wacky than PPD, since I got lost with that, but the wackiness was more like a layer on top of day to day events, so it didn’t feel that much out of place. Yet with that said, the show was still pretty random, since while the starting point was something common, the destination would be anything but. Most of the time, I’m ok with the randomness (me putting Osaka above all other character in Azumanga Daioh supports this), but I’m certain that this randomness might put some people off. Instead of laughing it, they might think that it is just incomprehensible and not like it (like how I did with some of the jokes that I didn’t get).

And that is the thing, due to the nature of the original source, I really doubt that this anime will stick as long as the other KyoAni pillars (Key shows, Haruhi, K-ON!), mostly because it didn’t have an excellent story or have characters that we warmed up to. This is in no fault of KyoAni themselves, as they have shown that they did a good job with animating Nichijou, but since this source was more along the lines of laugh-and-get-on-with-something-else, or that the potential audience is even smaller than of K-ON or Clannad. I think that Nichijou might just end up being as popular as Lucky Star few years later, being forgotten / not talked about.

Well, at the same time, I really want KyoAni to stop running around with different adaptions and actually animate Little Busters!

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Day 9: Hoshi o ou Kodomo

By on December 28, 2011

After waiting four years since the release of 5 Centimeters Per Second (and having denied of it on WFAC), Makoto Shinkai finally released his fourth film, Hoshi o ou Kodomo. This movie was like 5 cm/s, a departure from his previous movies. Instead of dealing with science fiction (Voices, Places Promised) or pure reality (5 cm/s), Makoto latest film had a lot more fantasy placed into it, giving me a much more Studio Ghibli feel to the movie than his previous ones (read: all his previous films don’t feel it is in any way related to Studio Ghibli). I came out convinced that it was a great movie, but just not as great as his previous two films: 5 cm/s and The Place Promised in Our Early Days.

One thing that was obvious was how much grander the whole film was, of how a lot more background details were introduced in the film. There was the whole another land, the different creatures, different tribes, the technicality behind the fantasy etc. The cast was also a lot larger than the previous movies. And maybe as a nod back to Hayao Miyazaki, there were faint messages of anti-war. In all, it seemed grander than what Shinkai had made before.

Yet, the problem is that by focusing on so much stuff, it seems that Shinkai forgot to develop the characters and their relationships as much. The strongest point of 5 cm/s was that it took time to show the relationship that Takaki and Akari had formed a first, and then the suffering that Takaki (and Kanae) suffered as time passed by with Takaki not being able to see Akari. Similarly, Place Promised also spent the first half of the film showing the day to day interaction the three friends had before actually thickening the plot. On top of that, both movies had parts where there would be soliloquies by the various characters, expressing their inner feelings/depressions. In comparison, Hoshi o ou Kodomo skimps on the soliloquies and the relationships up building parts, and hence the characters ended up being more static and was just less fun to watch than Shinkai’s previous films.

As the soundtrack, while I’m in no way dissing TENMON, there wasn’t a particular track that particularly stood out for me. In 5cm/s, there was One More Change, One More Time (not TENMON), which after almost of whole movie of documenting their separation, fleshes out the emotions that had been accumulating for the whole movie. Place Promised had the main theme (Sayuri’s violin), which was played two times, one in the first half by Sayuri and once again near the end of the second half. The song, or the playing of the violin, signified the past where the three friends were together. Yea, the soundtrack for Hoshi was still really good, but none of them was just stood out for me. Maybe if I get around to getting a CD I might start to like and remember some tracks. >_>

Lastly, at least once during the movie I actually felt bored…and once or more that I rolled my eyes at how clichéd something was…not a good sign.

In defense, I think animation wise, Hoshi o ou Kodomo is better than what 5 cm/s and The Place Promised in Our Early Days had. For Place Promised and especially for Voices, the character art not only didn’t blend well with the beautiful CG art, but almost ugly to look at. 5cm was a bit better, but the character was still out of place at times. I never felt that when watching Hoshi o ou Kodomo, with the character movements natural and actually look as good as the background, I say that Hoshi have the best character art in Shinkai’s films so far. Also, because of the fantasy setting, the background art tends to be more colorful than other films, hence making it look more like a Ghibli film. Added with the still magnificent sky/clouds CG, the whole film was just visually appealing.

In isolation, Hoshi o ou Kodomo is a fantastic film, but since it is from Makoto Shinkai, I expected more, and hence I am a bit disappointed when it doesn’t deliver something that was supposed to surpass 5 cm/s.

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