Kurogane's Anime Blog

Found this over Twitter:

Working!! seems to be the latest victim of some bloggers who delight in harshly criticizing certain animes. Since I’m relatively new to this world, I didn’t really notice this trend until last year, when I saw that suddenly many bloggers were making fun and criticizing the anime Kampfer – I almost decided not to watch it, but something caught my attention. That was that in a very short span of time, several blogs had panned it, often in a similar style and only after watching one episode. Of course, after watching it I realized it wasn’t half as bad as they said it was. In my old blog I termed this the “wolf pack mentality” of some bloggers.

Here we should make a distinction between not liking an anime and bullying. It’s fine if you don’t like K-ON or Working! or Kampfer and write about that. You comment why you don’t like it, fine. However, many people just enjoy bullying both the show and its viewers. It appears that certain blogs exist with the sole purpose of criticizing shows all the time, and I wonder why those people watch shows they don’t like – is it only so they have material to criticize? And if you only watched a couple of episodes and then dropped it, why keep talking over and over about it?

In fact, this is related to elitism. You don’t gain respect -that is, you don’t look like you have good taste- if you don’t criticize a show every week. Elitism, criticism and taste equating that there are some shows, especially popular ones, that you must criticize just for the sake of building and maintaining a reputation. I dealt with this in another essay.

Personally I’ve been trying to avoid this, to actually look positive, ever since I started this blog. There is a scene in Aria the Origination where Alice-chan is talking with Alicia-san and she asks why Alicia never gets angry when Akari (or even Aria-shachou) makes a mistake.

I want to do something like that. I prefer to focus on the positive qualities of any show I follow – it doesn’t mean I won’t say I didn’t like something, but I won’t insist on that, I don’t want some black aura coming out of my blog. And if I don’t really like a show, I will just quietly drop it, maybe comment why I dropped it, and end of the story. For example, Queen’s Blade. I dropped it, I didn’t like it. Should I make fun of it -and its viewers- every week?

Source: My extended anime “tweets”

QFT’ed.

This is why when people ask me about Omamori Himari or Negima anime… OH WAIT THEY DON’T EXIST.

… and another season of Hidamari ends. This time not with a poignant note or anything, since they spent the whole episode making tomato buffet, rather on a feeling that says, “we’ll be seeing each other again.” At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if a 4th season is announced by the end of this year.

While I enjoyed it, as a good de-stress-ing show, I can’t really say much about the show itself. I guess that’s the thing with me and iyashikei shows, I just don’t really go talking about them much, but I do appreciate them as a way to unwind and relax without much expectations. One thing I would say about Hoshimittsu is that it’s the best season of Hidamari for me so far, mostly because it feels that SHAFT got the pacing and the time-skipping thing down well this time round, rather than the confusing chronological mess of season 1 and 2.

Liked: Yes (7 out of 10)
Rewatch: Unlikely.

Oh Tsucchi, those words will surely come back to “bite” you again one day, heh heh.

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Darker than Black Gaiden 2 is finally tying the series in from the first to the second one.

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Kobato and Fujimoto reenacting Tsubasa:RC

So it turns out Kobato is a dead soul given a chance to reincarnate to her beloved one’s side if she manages to collect the konpeito. And the hat was to hide a crown that somehow marks her as one.

I think I rather prefer the implied hints in the manga that said she’s actually an Angel.

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… and Gintama ends at 201 episodes over 4 years of airing.

Since I picked it up in it’s second year, Gintama has been consistently the most funniest, random and sarcastic series ever. While it’s a shounen anime technically, it NEVER takes itself seriously, except maybe in moments of serious.

With a cast of minor characters that ever keeps growing but never overstaying their welcome, Gintama was truly a fun show to watch and keep up with. I am pretty damn impressed in fact, at how they’ve kept their humour fresh all this while, with the cast poking fun at everything in pop culture. I think it’s probably harder to think of something they haven’t poked fun at than the other way round.

Man, I am so going to miss this show. That’s one consistent, weekly dose of laughter gone now. Durr hurr hurr :(.

Liked: Extremely (9 out of 10)
Rewatch: Maybe I should start back from the beginning and watch one episode a week till the show resumes back.

Watch everything that sounds remotely interesting to you.
Drop those that suck after the 3rd episode.

After all, who coulda thought that Hanamaru Kindergarten would end up one of the hits of last season? Certainly not by just reading these silly season previews I reckon.

That’s why I never really write them out for my blog. You never know what turns out good and what turns out shit in the end.

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One girl.

Her trumpet.

An imminent war.

Who will triumph?!

(man this would be so perfect for a movie poster)

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Hurr… why so emo, Tsucchi?

Despite the dramatic change of mood and tone, I quite liked how this introspective episode was done, especially when we thinking that Tsucchi was actually depressed over his failed confession last week. Turns out he went waaaaaaaaay past that and in to truly deep and dangerous territory; the meaning of working. Only one more step to the really dangerous spiral that is “the meaning of life”. Seriously, whenever I fell in to that whirlpool of thoughts, I truly felt that life was pretty damn meaningless.

Thankfully, Tsucchi has great friends around, and Anzu really shined through this episode with her persistence to cheer up Tsucchi. Coupled with a few nudges by Sakura-senpai, looks like that was enough to elevate him back out from that dangerous condition.

Also, this episode offered to explain a little about the reason behind Yamamoto-sensei’s “denseness” by using the “I have an objective to achieve.” reason. Quite a lame copout, I thought, but at least Tsucchi got to know about it. Let’s hope it does motivate him to do better from now onwards.

Finally, the preview is saying that he might be confessing to her, again, in the final episode. Wonder how that’ll turn out, considering what was just achieved in this episode.