Shangri-la 8: Rube Goldberg, not MacGuyver

by dm00

 

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.

Eden of the East 6: Laughing Akira

by dm00

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes

How scary is it that all I had to do was type “I tho…” into the browser search-box, and its first suggestion was the quote I was looking for?

Shangri-la 6: datakake shoujo

by dm00

The sky above Kuwait was the color of television tuned to a dead channel

Hanners is in despair while PSGels likes what’s happening.

I like it, too, less for the interpersonal drama and more for the political tangle, with Japan a wholly-owned subsidiary of Atlas Corporation, and Ishida Finance nibbling at the edges, different factions at work within Atlas itself, and Metal Age (or at least Nagiko) pulling at the knotted strands of the Atlas Corporation, too.

I can sympathize with Hanners’ complaints — there are a lot of strands running through this show; but, like PSGels, I’m happy with how they’re braiding them together. I am growing increasingly interested in the novels that this series adapts — I can imagine quite a few favorite books that might look this chaotic (but promising) at this point in an anime adaptation, so I’m willing to be patient.

Impressions on Hyakko: A Class Act Led By A Class Clown

By TheBigN

Sometimes, it takes time for a show to find it’s groove, or for us to find ours when watching the show if we give it that chance.  The first word that came to my mind when watching Hyakko was “off-beat”, or at least “off the beaten path” (which now that I think about it, doesn’t make too much sense) from the show’s attempts of humor. It pulled through jokes in its own way at it’s own pace, and though that resulted in timing and execution problems of some of the attempts along the way, it usually worked for me. But more importantly, my initial thoughts of Hyakko also came from the cast of “off-beat” characters and their interactions, and that’s where this show is won, in my opinion.

Awesome choice. That the Hyakko mangaka drew this is more awesome.