My Delusions As A Fanboy: If Moe Is A Cancer…

By TheBigN

What type of cancer would it be? Something slow-growing, yet considered incurable like a chronic lymphocytic leukemia? Something that could have been avoided if people didn’t use certain things too much, like smoking with lung cancers? Something that’s silent until it’s too late, like some forms of pancreatic cancer? Course, I have problems with hearing this metaphor in the first place, as it paints moe as something that’s negative, bothersome, and ultimately ruinous for anime, and I wonder why? Whether you agree with that or not (and I feel like I’m simplifying things too much here, in my opinion), I feel like moe is used as a scapegoat too much, where people use it as the answer du jour for whatever ails anime, and I never feel comfortable about that.

Is the answer really cancer?

Not the greatest song in the world, and is this even a tribute?

You’ve seen this video before on the blog, but it was one of the first things I remembered when I first heard of the news yesterday. For better or for worse (better in my opinion):

I’m not sure many people on earth now are as influential as Michael Jackson was. Or if not that, I’m not sure there’s someone else who could somehow bridge various gaps between different groups of people like he could with his music, despite all of the other eccentricities and controversies surrounding the man. I mean, lol anime even. Life goes on. Rest in peace Michael Jackson.

By TheBigN

Eden of the West

Aaron Copland’s Rodeo animated by Eleanor Stewart

Zetsubou Sensei GN v2

More Zetsubou-sensei? Yorokobusu shita!

(I sure hope I got that caption right.)

Volume two of Del Rey’s translation of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei arrived a couple of weeks ago, and, if anything, it’s better than the first volume.

Del Rey’s designers have done a good job paying respect to Koji Kumeta’s color work with their simple cover designs (which contrasts with the busy-ness of Kumeta’s pages — see below).  This volume, like the last, comes with many pages (10 this time) of notes at the end, including a few in which the translator admits defeat (”Unfortunately, analyzing this map in detail would take as much space as the entire volume…”). But all is not lost — along the way the reader is learning about many running jokes in the series.

But they do an admirable job, despite missing an opportunity to put Kumeta’s under-the-dust-jacket Komori joke (”Hey! Don’t open it, okay?”) on the “Stop! This is manga! You’re going the wrong way!” page.

You’re going to have to carry all that weight, Yui.

By TheBigN

I’m definitely not the first to find and link to this K-On! MAD (yes, I know some of you are probably saying “Not another one.”, but meh), but I think it’s an awesome combo enough that it needs more exposure.

Coming off the recent episode, I’ve also found that whenever KyoAni tries to add in some melodrama to the show, like in this previous episode with Ritsu and two episodes ago when Azusa was wondering if the club was where she really belonged and stuff, it comes off as awkward to me. Not bad, but awkward. Some of it is probably due to me reading the source material beforehand (which will make me really enjoy this next and last broadcasted episode), but I also think that a certain pace/feeling has been set for K-On!, so breaking it up is a little disorienting. Granted, Ritsu’s situation was much more so than Azusa’s which made sense given here character, but to me it was still noticeable.

And as for the series ending broadcast next week, if there’s more K-On!, that would be nice, but it definitely wouldn’t be nice to see the overzealous fans and detractors (especially the “bandwagon hater” types) come with it. Just saying.

I've been tired for a while myself.

Bamboo Blade manga v1

More proof that "it's all about Tamaki"

Volume one of the Bamboo Blade manga arrived in the mail the other day.  Despite sharing this blog-space with TheBigN, I was a late-comer to Bamboo Blade, but I’m intent on making up for lost time.

Shangri-la 8: Rube Goldberg, not MacGuyver

All the pieces are there, assembled by thumbs.

Update, one week later: This post starts out negative, as that was my first reaction to the episode.  Then as I thought about it more and more (as I wrote this post) I began to appreciate how the episode had been put together.  The end result was a complete reversal in my feelings, such that I think this episode is actually quite good.

I’ve tried to believe.  There’s been a lot that’s quite good about this overly-maligned series.  But really, this episode was almost bad enough to be worthy of the disappointing Allison and Lillia.

You can see that they’re trying.  The climax wasn’t a deus ex machina — we see all the bits of the machina being assembled, Macgyver-like, from things that have been introduced earlier in the series or in this episode, and it’s easy to see that something is going on.  There’s pleasure to be gained from seeing how all the clues we see will be put together.

Unfortunately, some of it requires prison-guards with an almost Imperial-Storm-Trooper-like inattention to detail, plus there’s a small coordination problem that is glossed over: how does solitarily-confined Kuniko communicate the plan she’d hatched, during her three-days of punishment, to her co-conspirators?

Generic New Haruhi Post #286

By TheBigN

(sorry nekosasu. )

Okay, I’ll admit that even more new The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is nice to see. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan was more than enough for me, and I’ll definitely be missing those and the Nyoro~n Churuya-san short episodes, but now that there apparently are more episodes related to the first series coming down the pipe, I’m not complaining at all. At the same time, I’m not going to lie; I would have really enjoyed seeing the reaction if the accidental leak about “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody” turned out to be false. When I see how some people get a little too obsessed with something (myself included), it’s nice to have some cold water moments to keep us a little more grounded, I think.

It would be nice if Mikuru willingly took Haruhi up on this offer on the bed.