Tag Archives: Precure

Day 5 – Catching my heart and leaving a smile

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５つの服が導く過去 | １ドラ

５つの服が導く過去 | １ドラ

If you told me that I would be watching a mahou shoujo by the end of this year and would constantly rave how good it is on Twitter, I would look at you skeptically before agreeing on the possibility that I might watch another magical girl show, since obviously I watched Nanoha and Madoka and really liked both of them. However, if you told me at the end of last year that one year later I would be still watching an airing magical girl anime that is clearly aimed at little girls, constantly raving about it, and would have already finished another series from the same franchise, I would look at you as if you are crazy. However, you would be also be totally correct and I would be asking if you are a time traveler or something by now. And yes, that series is Precure, or Pretty Cure.

Having watched Nanoha and Madoka and liked it, I was not afraid to watch more magical girl shows. Additionally, with people saying how Madoka and Nanoha was not really a mahou shoujo show, and being convinced by people like kriz, I decided to watch Smile Precure as it started to air, and heck it was a good decision. And later, after seeing and being satisfied in what Smile Precure had to offer, I also watched Heartcatch Precure as people said it is the best show in the franchise so far. In all, both shows were all pretty (cure) good.

After watching the shows for a bit, the characters grew on me and I basically warmed up to either few or all of the Precure members, mostly because of how well-written the characters are. In both Precure, each character was unique in their personality, in their interests, and in their weaknesses, and with each Precure’s personality being refined by each episode. While they are fighting against enemies that is keen on destroying the world, most of the times the Precure just doesn’t fight for the world alone, but are often fighting against their worries and their or other’s fears as they fight against their enemies, and hence the issues that is thrown to the audiences are a lot more personal, some that we can really relate to, compared to just some broad issue like world destruction (and as I have said yesterday, of how having connections to our personal experiences can help us enjoy the show even more).

As for minor characters, because of Heartcatch’s formula, we often get chances to see the worries of some random person, only to get exploited by the enemies. While this ends up being an emotional-issue-of-the-week formula, in which some if not most of the issues that the Precure solves are rather inconsequential, I still like Heartcatch’s formula more than Smile’s formula, since by showing the issues of more people and solving them, it is more likely the show will touch on an issue that the audiences are watching. Seeing such issues being displayed and solved, it will be an encouragement, even if by a little bit, to the audiences.

And it is because the similarity to our situation, and the realism both the Precure’s and other’s personal issues that I come to accept the characters, letting them grow on me as they grow through trials set by their enemies, up to the point where I would share in their struggles and cheer as they overcome those issues.

Also, one really important thing that I almost forgot that I also liked about Precure is the focus on friendship. While from time to time, the Precure’s themselves need to face their own issues by themselves in the end, it constantly show how they cannot beat their enemies by themselves (ie all 5 Precure needs to be present for the final attack that is mandatory to beating the enemies in Smile Precure in the second half) and how even in the character’s individual struggles, they find hope and support from their fellow Precures. As seen with my admiration to Akane Hino for her treasuring her friendship over herself, I am really weak against shows that shows the importance of friendship so boldly.

Aside from the well-written characters that have made me come to like Precure, I also always enjoyed of how much comedy I got out of the show every week, from the exaggerated reaction faces that few shows can rival to some of the plain wacky episodes, from Miyuki failing for jokes and giggles to the usually comedic antagonists (especially Red Oni), I’m sure that I will have a good laugh each week.

And can you favorite show play Jan-Ken-Pon with one of the characters in the show almost every week? I THINK NOT

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! 05: Romancing with References

Posted on by fnzna
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異端なる双尾娘 | オートマタ

After a mediocre episode (compared to the other  Chu2koi episodes) to introduce Nibutani, we finally see the plot starting to pick up with the relationship between Rikka and Yuuta beginning to deepen with the whole math test incident. However, before we start talking about how moe Rikka is by the end of this episode or now, let’s talk about something way more interesting/better, that is, Dekomori and her references. We have seen how effective her references to specific mecha shows in stirring the emotions of mecha or former mecha fans like me in episode 3 already. This episode, she not only again shows us her vast knowledge in both anime and game, but has successfully affected Yuuta (former Chuunibyou) and Rikka (fellow Chuunibyou) to blur out some references also. Added with math test being a major plot for this episode, I will pull out some math concepts just for the heck of it.  Without further ado, let’s hairspin.

The episode starts of with showing that Rikka only got 2% on her first math midterm, in which Rikka explains that she did that bad on the midterm was because her mind was running under zero-axioms. Axioms, as defined by Wikipedia, is “a premise or starting point of reasoning”, which in Rikka case, it means that she does not have a starting point of reasoning. In math, or in an axiomatic system, axioms can be seen as a set of rules to derive theorems, with each axioms can be assumed to be correct without proof within the same if the system is complete and consistent (Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem). In proofs using axiomatic systems, as I have learned in my computer science logic class, I would use a series of axioms derive my initial condition to the desired position, and would be considered true if I do get the desired position, since in all steps, I applied axioms, which is assumed/defined to true in the system, and hence the result for every step would be a correct statement, including the last one. Putting it back to Rikka case, having axioms can be liken to knowing the equations necessary for the test (ie if the test was on geometry, her having the proper axioms would mean her knowing the formula to the area of a circle for example). So in short, she is saying she forgot all the necessary formulas and etc needed for the test.

Returning from the faclty room, Rikka tells Dekomori that they are in an emergency, to which Dekomori brilliantly replies, Blood Type Blue, and proceeds to sing Decisive Battle with Rikka. Obviously this is a reference to when the Angels attack GeoFront, Neo Tokyo-3 in Neon Genesis Evangelion, from the discovery of the Angel, usually by discovering something of Blood Type Blue, to the state of emergency the NERV comes under once they discover an Angel, and finally with the Evangelions sent out fighting against the Angels with Decisive Battle playing as the BGM. This relates closely to when Dekomori referenced to Evangelion when she told Yuuta her age in a roundabout way back in episode 3. With a series as ironic as Evangelion, especially with the third Rebuild of Evangelion movie releasing within weeks, KyoAni is totally banking on us having a good laugh when we recognize this reference. And heck, they did an amazing job at catching the attention of people like me.

Rikka was talking about 4*7 and 7*4 and getting confused by it, even though the answer should be the same. In more technical terms, 4*7 and 7*4 means that the multiply function between two numbers has commutative property. While this is clear and true in this case, it is not always true, with matrix multiplication being one example. Another math related reference is they talked about is the times table, which is basically a square matrix that has the row and column header listed from 1 to (usually) 12, and every cell within the table is just the product of the respective row and column header. It is nothing really amazing, but I hear that students back in Asian countries had to memorize the whole table so that they can get the answer instantaneous. (Un)fortunately, I never had to memorize that…

Around the same time, Dekomori blurred out the phrase “Level Upper“. This is a reference to an incident that happened in Toaru Kagaku no Railgun and the object behind the whole incident. Level Upper was the name given to a sound clip that would let the users to become stronger, usually making the user to use powers one level higher than they are at, (ie Saten Ruiko, a Level 0, was finally to use abilities because of Level Upper because it allowed her to use her Level 1 abilities. The catch is that Level Upper would cause the users to fall into a coma.

After talking about times table, Rikka proceeds to call 7*3 to be Evil Pierrot. You know where else I have heard of Pierrot recently? Smile Precure, where Pierrot is the big bad in that show and his minions are trying to revive him by gathering bad energy. So what does 7*3, or 21 have to do with Pierrot from Simle Precure? Nothing really. However, recall that at first Rikka made the mistake of evaluating (x+7)(x+4) to x^2 + 11x + 29, making the mistake at 7*4. She evaluated 7*4 to be 29, while the correct answer is 28, an off by one error. Hence, if we assume that she made the error of evaluating 7*3 incorrect with an extra 1 in there for no apparent reason, we would get 22. (However, if you think about it, this assumption is just weird. Since if we assume the same % off from the correct for her multiplications, or 29-28/28 = 1/28 = 3.57%, her answer for 7*3 will be 21*103.57% = 21.7497..wait. The idea to put an rule to someone’s error is absurd in the first place, not to mention that she got 7*7 correctly, solving it to be 49 in question 3). And interestingly, the original clock that counts the number of times that Pierrot’s minions has gotten bad energy ends at 22 (new one ends at 18), matching Rikka’s answer for 7*3. Am I just stretching this reference too much? Most likely.

After knowing that Dekomori is a math whiz (which might also be a reference to some main character in mecha shows that is shown to be a mechanical geek even at the very beginning of the show), Rikka falls in defeat, in which Yuuta mentions that she is like someone in Smash that has 300% damage. Smash is a clear reference to the fighting game franchise Super Smash Bros., and 300% refers to both when the character that the player is controlling has sustained 300% damage, meaning that the character can be knocked out very easily, and the sudden death mode where the characters starts out with 300% damage.

Later, when the club is washing/fooling around in the school pool, Dekomori mentioned that she is adjusting firing angle to Gel Dorva. Honestly, this is quite an absurd reference from the original Gundam, mostly because I actually haven’t watched all of the first Gundam but knew of the main events through games. Gel Dorva is the line of defense between Granada and Zeon, and also was the location that which Degwin Sodo Zabi, the dictator of Zeon, and General Revil, one of the leading officers in the Earth Federation Space Force, met to negotiate the end of the war. But due to inner fighting, one of Degwin’s son,  Gihren Zabi, constructed a humongous laser cannon and fired at them during the negotiation, which was along the Gel Dorva line, killing both of them. This actually make sense in the show’s context, since Nibutani was talking with other, or negotiating, before being attacked, Dekomori is firing from a water-hose and hence mildly looks similar to when the huge laser cannon was fired, and lastly, it gives context of the line that Dekomori speaks of afterwards, calling Nibutani a hypocrite both as a reference of Degwin cowering to Earth Federation and for Nibutani going back on her past ways, which Dekomori looks highly on.

And after the swimming pool scene, we entering into the second part of episode 05, where we start to see Rikka starting to open up to Yuuta seeing of how much he cares for her. Frankly, as moe as Rikka as by the end of episode 5, they better not cut Dekomori’s screentime, since she is such a more interesting character to follow and to relate to.

Extra: Potential references

There are parts of this episode where I sense that Dekomori might be referencing something but don’t have a clue on what she was referring to, here are the following:

  •  When Rikka and Dekomori was talking about the times table being some kind of a boss, the animation turned as if it was a 8-bit RPG game. Is that game a generic 8-bit RPG game or was it a reference to a certain franchise, I do not know.
  • In the pool, when she showed off her Mjollnir Accel move, she mentioned about increasing her abilities by 3.88 times. Surly with a detailed number like that, she must be referring to something…
  • Finally when Dekomori and Nibutani are firing water at each other, creating an arc, Dekomori shouted GENESIS. I also have no clue on what she was referring to

Aside from all those, I might be missing some references, if you also think Dekomori is awesome and is looking for references in everything she is saying and found something that I haven’t found yet, please reply, watashi kininarimasu.

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! 03: Mechas and Adolescence

Posted on by fnzna
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ヒラケゴマ!! / K.C

Remember back when Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! (Chu2koi) and Little Busters! haven’t shown yet people like me were mad at KyoAni of how they chose to animate Chu2koi and not Little Busters was looking forward to Chu2koi just because to compare it to Little Busters! and to hate KyoAni even more if it is nothing short of amazing, well, I guess KyoAni did it again, and with episode 3, I can finally conclude that KyoAni did make a wise decision to animate Chu2koi even it if means of giving LB! to J.C.Staff.

Episode 3 was a blast to watch, and will most likely be my second favorite show this week, right after the spectacular Smile Precure episode that aired this week, an episode that I loved it for almost the same reason that I like this week of Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! , that one or more the characters are one of us, making us to easily relate and praise those characters and plays homage to several shows or genres of shows. While this week’s Smile Precure manages to show the passion that Yayoi has to the (super) robots genre, the whole show of Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, and hence episode 3, reminds us of our younger, more foolish, more creative selves.

Growing up with Gundam

If I can define my childhood with one anime series, I would highly likely use Gundam. With Gundam Wing being one of my first Gundam shows that I watched (apparently I liked it so much that my friends got me a VHS of Mobile Suit Gundam: Soldiers of Sorrow for my birthday one year, which obviously have no relations to Gundam Wing plot wise…). And later, like most kids in Hong Kong, started building Gundam models, quickly going from High Grade to Master Grade (Perfect Grade was too expensive for a kid). My interest in Gundam later brought me to Super Robot Wars, a franchise of games that mashes dozens of mecha shows together to fight along/against each other, and hence expanded my horizons to the vast amounts of mecha shows. Recent years, while my craze for mecha has died down, but at least I still droll over the Super Robot War’s battle sequences. Throughout my adolescence, I have been a pretty big mecha fan.

In a sense, that’s why, despite my best efforts to support Akane (mostly because of her funny, friendship-orientated and hot-blooded personality, which is also usually found in some characters in mecha shows), Yayoi was really the star of episode 35 because of how much she resembled our mecha otakuness.

As for Chu2koi, while the robot references are a lot more subtle, but I still found three instances in episode 3 where it can be interpreted as a homage to the mecha genre. In the beginning of the fight between Rikka and Sanae, Sanae started singing some tone for a battle BGM, and when I hear it, I am reminded of a battle theme of some sorts from an mecha anime show. After thinking and searching a bit, I found that the closest song to Sanae’s BGM is Gunbuster March from Gunbuster, played when Gunbuster first appeared from the spaceship with it’s hand folded. With Chu2koi borrowing from Gunbuster, one of the most iconic mecha shows, just tickles the mecha otakuness in me or my past, making me scream in joy for it.

Another reference is also made by Sanae. Sanae’s weapon Lunatic Mjollnir Crusher, basically a humongous golden hammer, resembles GaoGaiGar’s Goldion Hammer (not as hard to pick up, both is a humongous golden hammer), with the Crusher referencing Goldion Hammer’s successor Goldion Crusher. While I have not watch GaoGaiGar before, but his Goldion Hammer attack is one of my favorite attacks in Super Robot Wars, and it is always a joy to see how OP it is, so I’m again very delighted to see such a mecha reference in a show that really have nothing to do with mechas. [Though you can also say how her weapon is similar to Vita's Graf Eisen from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha because of the hammer's ability to increase in size, though Graf Eisen itself might be referenced from Goldion Hammer (links to danbooru)]

The last mecha reference is when Sanae said how she is the same age as the Second and Third Children, a blunt reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Shinji Ikari (Third Child) and Asuka Langley Soryu/Shikinami (Second Child), which I think both of them are 14 years old, putting both Children at grade 8, or chuu2,  and also Sanae at grade 8 if the reference is correct [inb4 Shinji is an unloved chuunibyou], which would put her right at the grade that chuunibyous tends to appear in. Again, like GaoGaiGar and Gunbusters, Evangelion is also an iconic mecha series that is loved or hated by the community (hate because of the TV end and of all the angst teenage leads that came because of it).

It was Sanae that pulled all three mecha references out eh? Maybe she is just a really big mecha otaku, and hence the best character in Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! (but Pillow Senpai so cute also….)

Adolescence in general

Aside from just reminds us of the mecha otakuness inside us, the antics of Rikki and other just reminds us of our childhood and adolescence in general. While we might not have been as chuu2 as Rikki was (even if we were, we might never want to admit it), who never picked up something boring like a ruler or wooden stick and imagined it to be a sword and start playing around or start an adventure? Even I remembered that I would take my completed Gundam figures and use it to create make-believe fights between each other, usually causing my figures to snap into pieces after prolonged moving around… (o the horror). Also, Yutta’s desire to seal off his old life is something that we also experienced as we grow up and see our past as overly childish and embarrassing, something that I kinda also did when I first entered into university, only to revert it shortly after…

Chu2koi lite episode 4 also did a good job in making me remind of my past, of how confused I would be when I first entered into a supermarket, of all the choices there are, and all the unknown spices that seem as foreign as potions from my games, (FYI: I still donno what most of the spices in supermarket does) and I guess that might have been a time where I also would make up overly weird and complex explanation for stuff that I don’t understand.

On top of just being moe and having really fluid and high quality fight scenes, with the show reminding of our adolescence and serving references to our mecha otakuness, I think we have found a show that almost everyone will enjoy, and while it might be on everyone’s number 1, it will be highly rated, and APR have shown that already since the start of this season.

Off-topic: I hed that the female lead of Robotics;Notes made several Char Aznable, that should be pretty good also.

Heartcatch Precure: You enemies are also humans!

Posted on by fnzna
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クモジャキー「プリキュア、覚悟するぜよ！」 / isumi

クモジャキー「プリキュア、覚悟するぜよ！」 / isumi

So I just finished watching Heartcatch Precure, and unless Smile Precure suddenly becomes totally awesome for the rest of the seriers, Heartcatch is the better of the two Precure shows I have seen, mostly because of the inclusion of Cure Sunshine. However, instead of writing a whole post dedicated to Cure Sunshine/Itsuki Myoudouin, let’s talk about the antagonists of the story, or more specifically the Cadets of Sabark (Sasorina, Kumojacky and Cobraja).  Spoilers ahead

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Summing up Summer 2012 Anime Season

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ちびキャララミバ / えらんと

Despite stopping Weekly Musings since the end of last term, I still have kept up keeping track of my weekly anime ratings in terms of a spreadsheet, mostly for my APR ballot. Since it is the end of the summer season, it means that I will be doing my final touches on my summer 2012 spreadsheet and starting my fall spreadsheet, let’s just tally up and see what I think was the worst to best show of the summer season.

Last season I ranked the shows based on the total points it accumulated during the whole season (a point is gain from having a better episode compared to every other episode that aired in the same week), and even than I stated how that way of ranking placed Natsuiro Kiseki at a huge disadvantage, as I started that show half way into the spring season, it didn’t collect any points for the episodes that I didn’t watch as it aired (5 episodes). For this season, I first tried to just find the average points gained for each show and ranking it based on it. While that solved the issue that Natsuiro Kiseki had last time, there were still places that some shows might end up having an disadvantage on. For example, on the weeks that Olympics were held, several shows didn’t get to broadcast for those few weeks. The results is that the shows that were able to broadcast would not have gained an extra point if that show were better than the shows that were postponed. So additionally I tried a new different methods to rank this season’s shows. One is to only let each week’s top 5 get points and then calculate the rankings according to the average points, that way, even on a week with less shows, the maximum number of points that a show can get is 5. Lastly I ranked the shows according to each method (original method, or Method A, or the top 5 method, Method B, gave them points according to each rank from 12-0, took the sum and did a final ranking. Here are the results:

Method B Method A  Final result
Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita 12 10 22
Smile Precure 11 11 22
Joshiraku 10 12 22
Yuruyuri ♪♪ 8 9 17
Tari Tari 9 6 15
Hyouka 8 7 15
Binbougami ga! 6 5 11
Space Bros 5 4 9
Saki Achiga 1 8 9
Eureka AO 4 3 7
Kokoro Connect 4 2 6
Sword Art Online 4 1 5
Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse 0 0 0

I swear that the top 3 being tied is pure coincidence, I didn’t force my result to be like that or anything >_>.

Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita

I liked it the show very much, though I can’t really put my finger on especially why. In general though, I really liked the main characters, all of them have this sarcastic personality that just make the character not like any other generic character seen in other shows, which on top is helped by the wonderful (or lack of) performance of their voice actress. Yes I’m talking about Watashi and Y in particular, which both is a huge reason why I liked the show. Additionally, another big reason why I liked the show was because of the fairies. They love sweets, makes really nasty comments with a smile, does random stuff just because and are just adorable. The the whole series being colorful and wacky also helped me liking this show also. I’m still a bit iffy about the last few episodes, as it stopped being just fun and games, but recalling that the original novel was written by Romeo Tanaka, person behind Cross Channel and Yume Miru Kusuri (both really good visual novels), I guess the last few episodes are where we get to see the serious stuff underneath all the fun and games (similar to Cross Channel, which while was funny and wacky at time, really dives in to some really serious plot).

Smile Precure

What can I say? The show talks of friendship and each episode have the girls just having fun and fighting weekly monsters. After watching for 30+ episodes, I have come to like all 5 of them, so I guess I’m pretty biased toward this show. I guess my biggest issue with them is that the fighting scene is a bit too uninteresting, especially since the amount of them they still use to animate their final move.

Joshiraku

Written by the same guy behind Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Joshiraku has the same kinds of jokes that made me like SZS so much. Additionally, instead of being illustrated by Kumeta himself (as with SZS), it was illustrated by Yasu and is animated by JC Staff, which seems to making few good shows this year. I loved SZS, and hence why Joshiraku being similar to SZS enough, easily became one of my favorite shows this season. If you love puns and references Joshiraku is something that you should sometime, if not, you can still watch it for the moe girls. My only issue with this? Not enough people are subbing it.

Yuruyuri ♪♪

Despite having a perfect final two episodes, the quality of jokes for each episode differs quite a bit. I guess the main reason is that some cast are just less interesting than others, and when some episodes put more focus on the less interesting characters, I get bored and hence ranked this show lower than, say Joshiraku, which all 5 were almost always present. Despite that, I really enjoyed the show, and came in close in being the best show if it weren’t for those less than satisfactory episodes.

Tari Tari

Heck, the art was beautiful, the few times that the main characters sang were also pretty good, Wakana is cute etc. However, while I can’t really hate this show, there weren’t much there for me to like either. Yes I like Wakana’s arc and her in the last few episodes, but some of the other arcs were so-so (or how Taichi just got shafted). I donno, maybe they are just playing it safe with the show, as it have seemed to have done everything right, but nothing just seem to be that memorable for me other than Wakana (actually, even Wakana’s arc seemed to have ended pretty blend)…

Hyouka

I’m guessing most of you would be putting Hyouka as your favorite this season. No fault of the show, but I only warmed up to this show in the final parts where I finally realized something that everyone realized way before. Yes, the end of the school festival arc was KyoAni’s genius ability at work, and yes the final episode was very pretty and HNNNNGGGG-ing, but I guess I really didn’t ‘get’ the show until or near the end of the school festival arc. Call me slow but that made me rank Hyouka lower than most people had in the earlier episodes

Binbougami ga!

While I do like comedy, I’m less of a fan to slapstick comedy than I’m a fan to puns and references (Joshiraku), and my ranking for this show shows that. The comedy aren’t bad, and I really like it when Momiji dresses up as characters from other franchise, but heck I will never put this above Joshiraku. Also, aside from the comedy, the drama part of the show weren’t all that original and was kinda meh.

As for the other ones: Space Brothers is getting a bit too slow for me to enjoy on a weekly basis, Saki Achiga only happened once so not surprising that it didn’t get that high (only one chance to gain points in Method B), Eureka 7 AO went from anticipation to interesting then right to annoying and a disappointment , Kokoro Connect ended up looking like it was making plot twists for the sake of making them making me stop caring about them, Sword Art Online was never that good for me, and Total Eclipse is just flat out horrible, why am I even still watching that show?