Kurogane’s Anime Blog

Dear god, finally finished this series….OTL. Now I can breathe a huge sigh of relief. I can’t believe I managed to hold on to this series for this long, hahah. I would count this series as a “waste of resources and talent”, if you get my drift ;).

One last thing, why, oh why, did they had to ruin the awesomeness of Setsuna by making her pick up Kuu’s annoying “Haike… watashi no…” habit. Dammit, she was the only character I liked.

Gundam Otome

I had somewhat dreaded this anime at first, since it’s by Sunrise, and being Sunrise, they somehow spinned in mecha in to a series where the original concept was to build the career of pop idol, based on 10 initial choices give to you. Can you say, “LOLMECHA”?

But well, the first episode isn’t that bad really, and it was far from my original expectation of “singing and dancing” mecha, but instead the girls seem to be part of an asteroid clean-up/earth protection team. It feels already a lot like Mai Hime/Mai Otome already, but of course this is Sunrise and it is being produced by the same team members.

But I’ll be honest here about the reason why I already like this show…

Yukari Tamura, in a tomboyish role. Period. God damned, I missed that aspect of her voice. Of course it also doesn’t help that Mai Nakahara, Hocchan and Noto-sama are playing main roles as well.

Hiro-san kawaii!!

Don’t worry, if you get ruined for marriage, I’ll take you as my bride. Besides I don’t think you can actually get fat for real :D. Ahh, Yuka Gotou is awesome.

Also, <3 at Yoshinoya-sensei’s penchant for karaoke and her ojizou-san.

Meganekko Mai 4TW!

So finally Kanon ends, and I took more than a week to actually write this post orz. It’s probably because of Ayu ending. It’s not bad per se, but I still prefer someone else, rather than her orz. Also, a shout out to Jeff here, who did that awesome Nayuki AMV interspersed with Last Regrets ~acoustic version~.

Anyways, really awesome ending to an awesomely done show by an already awesome studio. Everyone received a happy ending(apart from Makoto, of course) and I was glad to see Shiori surviving her disease and proceeding to act damn cute as usual, Mai with her less stoic self (man, gotta admit the head chop is cute), Sayuri with her “Ahaha~”’s, Nayuki being genki as usual and Akiko-san with her jam-making skillz back to health. As they said, it’s really a miracle, and miracles can really happen.

Now I won’t read too much in to the ending, as I’m pretty unmotivated to do that and there’s nothing really concrete to read in to anyways, let’s just close the curtain down on Kanon and let’s all look forward to CLANNAD in early 2008, most likely in spring to fit in the “Spring of CLANNAD” theme. God damn, Tomoyo’s 64 hit combo is fucking awesome. Meanwhile, let’s all not forget we still have Lucky Star to tide us over before CLANNAD comes. From what I’ve heard, seen and read, Lucky Star will be chockful of moe and otaku parodies, which we, otakus, all really love to watch :).

Now to get through 2 more weeks without a KyoAni show to catch……

A friend of mine pointed me to this article by jaalin of the Random Curiousity blog and it sparked a lively sparring between me and him lasting almost 3 hours. Here’s a little of my own thoughts.

I think it’s a total waste of ability and resources. A studio of KyoAni’s caliber shouldn’t be doing harem shows, which have traditionally just been there for the sake of showing off some more girls in maid outfits or nekomimi or some other ridiculous stuff like that.Not that I don’t appreciate it – it’s just something I feel is better left to the “lesser” studios and not the oharuhiliness that is Kyoto Animation.

Sadly, harem shows have sunk to such a level where harem is equated directly as fanservice. Of course 95% of most harem shows that have been produced are very much fanservice shows and are as she says, “quite ridiculous”. However, is it really true it’s a waste of resources and ability? What I truly think is that Kyoto Animation is trying to breathe life back in to the romance genre, after years of ridiculous fanservice shows that build upon the initial sexual nature of the origin material, totally ignoring the story of the original material. Kanon was never about the sex strictly, there was also a story to be followed and many characters to emphatise with. Besides, “harem” is a very big misnomer on it’s own, as the games just provide multiple choices, not all the choices.

If my understanding is correct, the main reason they picked up Kanon was because of the success of their initial venture into the visual novel genre, AIR.

Of course KyoAni’s venture in to AIR did in part made them take up Kanon, but in the end, they remade Kanon due to fan effort rather than picking on the success off AIR. Everybody who has even a little bit of understanding of the visual novel scene knows that Kanon 2002 did not give true justice to the awesomeness that is the Kanon VN and in fact, it would probably be more of a commercial venture by Toei to make more money off the popularity of Kanon than to truly tell the story of Kanon, while KyoAni is doing directly the opposite, by truly animating Kanon with a full storyline that encompasses the essence of the VN.

The way I see it, it’s like if Studio Ghibli decided they would make more money doing hentai. What if Totoro’s fat tail was on the front side of his body? What if Kiki used her broom for more than just transportation? What if “Laputa” actually meant “La Puta”? Could Ghibli have done it? Sure. But did they go ahead with cheap flattery and quick indulgences to make a quick yen? No way – they took their time to craft masterpiece after masterpiece that audiences around the world have held in the highest regard.In that same way, I’ve always hoped that KyoAni would start picking up material of a higher “moral standard”.

If KyoAni started to animate shows like Ghost in the Shell or Laputa, they won’t be wasting their “time and abilities”? What do you define “higher moral standard” as anyways? There isn’t much of an original moral standard to look upon anyways. Besides KyoAni did take their time with Kanon and even gave it a full 24 episode run, even if it was a remake. I would call that “taking their time to craft a masterpiece”.

So, is KeyAni a bad thing? I don’t really think so. Just like how Sunrise is associated with mecha and Gainax is associated with weirdness, Kyoto Animation’s association with “harem anime” (a misnomer by itself) will be here to stay. At least they’re pulling it off much, much more better than the rest. If Kanon 2006 is a waste of “resources and abilities”, then I’ll say we better not watch anime at all in the first place.

Be forewarned, this is going to be seriously image intensive. Seriously. I’m lazy to do a full report again and pictures are worth a thousand words each, so why not?

For those who want to download my complete set of GACC photos, they’re being hosted here. Try not to rape it to death.

The empty hall before the event starts…

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A recording of the Q&A session with Tohru Furuya during GACC 2007. I heard it live, in the front row, and I must say that he’s really an awesome fella. A bit too bad that the translator(she’s a JLPT Level One BTW) got a bad case of nerves during the interview, so she kinda screwed up some of the answers, she’s cute though ;). Well, anyways, the gist is there, the gist is there.

No I’m not dead yet. I’m just resting and doing a lot of other work I need to do.

In the mean time, this is GACC 07’s Hare Hare Yukai. I know it’s not really that coordinated or it’s exactly Hare Hare Yukai, but cut them some slack, kay? Too bad my own recording of the dance was grandly fucked up by my own camera, but I can say the girls are quite cute. More pictures and stuff coming out later.

Very dead now… very dead… first day of event had unexpectedly large number of visitors, even though the highlights(cosplay competition and seiyuu appearance) are tomorrow. Quite a number of cosplayers showed up, although mostly the Naruto-Bleach variety… but I did spot a Kaitou Kid(Detective Conan).

Spent RM100 buying an Evangelion trading figure set… will be buying Kaiyodo’s Mikuru tomorrow… maybe… Also managed to touch a real life Alter Fate lol. I’ll do full report with pics after day 2…. need to rest orz.

P.S. Watched Kanon 24. Still don’t like Ayu ending :P.

Yes, it’s finally done! Took me quite a while to find since it wasn’t on the usual places, but a well placed Google query after heads up from commenters set me on my way.

A really, really beautiful ending to the RE-TAKE series, wrapping it up completely with a truly satisfying ending, although not after quite some turmoil and hardships thrown at the characters. Kimigabuchi really developed Asuka’s character very well. I also must mention they made Rei a little more open and funnier too.

Sigh, I’m at a little loss for words here now, especially with Asuka’s awesome declaration of love at the end. I’ll end it here, sources are below.

• Rapidshare
• Torrent