Kurogane's Anime Blog

Hurr, epic butler action in this week’s episode.

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Oh god, what an epic line. “Open up my virgin tape!”

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Cake is always welcome

Nova started and omo followed up.

Which inspired me to think of this way; why is the genre called “slice-of-life”?

Sure, it usually attempts to present characters in a daily life based setting, but usually they can lean to more fantastical (Kino no Tabi, Mushishi) or sci-fi-ish (ARIA, YKK) bents.

In fact, the Japanese term for these types of shows are “kuuki-kei“, that roughly translates to “atmosphere/ambience-type”, and that term is really quite spot-on as a term describing those types of shows.

So why don’t we all just call it “ambience” anime? It’s much more accurate and a better term to describe them than “slice-of-life”; which in most cases, usually isn’t quite correct for most of them. Truly, their selling points are the settings and the pull they have towards the viewers, rather than the characters or the plotlines.

Oh god, HotD is getting too fucking win.

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I must’ve missed the memo stating WHITE FOX is part of Sunrise. ALIPRO OP following Minami Kuribayashi… pretty much quite a Sunrise trademark now. Not to mention the slightly spoiler-tastic OP featuring some cool juxtaposition shots of the protagonists vs the antagonists that is highly likely not going to be used in the main show… yeah, pretty much Sunrise.

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Sora wo Kakeru Kio?

Is Kio manly enough for you haters now? I think that saving a girl alone from a sinking ship’s engine room should feature pretty decent in the ranking of manly actions to take.

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Hurr, Morino-kun’s hunter mode is damn manly.

I wasn’t expecting much from Ookami-san after the initial lackluster episodes, but after episode 6, the show shot up from mediocre to interestingly watchable. Well, it’s pretty much still a predictable storyline but at least it’s an engaging one. Better than having them do random episodes with no coherency anyways.

Arai Satomi’s narration remains as awesome as usual, although steadily declining in number of laughs/lines lately. Not a bad thing though, since the story is getting quite a lot more serious.

One word perfectly describes this episode: D’aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Well, it was pretty certain the whole episode was being setup for a Crowning Moment of Courage, Heartwarming and Love, to the point of being rather blatant about it, but hell, I don’t dislike things like this once in a while. Especially with characters that I like.

It’s almost criminal how little screentime Eila and Sanya have gotten so far, this episode partially makes up for it I guess.

Slowpoke accusations be excused, I finally got to watch Inception on the big screen last night.

It was so utterly brilliant and mind-bending. Half of my mind is currently inaccessible, pondering and de-constructing the whole movie in my background of my subconscious; a huge problem at work. But then again, this always happens to me whenever I finish a story so brilliant and cathartic at the same time. It’s exactly the same state-of-mind I was stuck in when I first finished Evangelion^*1 (up to EoE).

Inception is one of those rare productions that not only is brilliantly layered and steeped with imagery, it also manages to touch out to something innately in my soul.

An example is the time-dilation effect in the movie is something that I experience daily, as a master of catnapping. I always wake up feeling as if I’ve just experienced a period of time a few times much longer than the real duration of my naps, and I daresay many will find that similar. Inception using that as a central plot device really resonated with me.

The overriding consensus about Inception is that it is a movie about filmmaking, and it’s something I highly agree on. But one of the best views about it that I subscribe to now after watching states the whole movie is basically a dream and there isn’t a ‘solid’ reality grounding it, which is basically as meta as fuck as you can get.

This brings me to a book I believe that really should be read in accompaniment to watching Inception; The Stories of Ibis. The idea of layered “realities”^*2 that is shared between both works offers a really interesting complementary view between each other, yet it is amazingly contrasting in origins. More importantly, while “inception” is the device driving the plot in the eponymous movie, Stories of Ibis ends with the inception of an idea; both works masterfully using the concept as a cathartic device.

Ah, but enough of the literary-wannabe comparisons. That is the problem I have with my own string-of-consciousness writing. The really appealing part of Inception is just how it captures my imaginations so easily, leaving me changed yet still feeling essentially same apart from the feeling I’ve had a new dimension opened up to me. A new angle and view that feels it has been a part of myself for a long time, but only just noticed it was there.

Inception is utterly brilliant, smart and left a parasite of an idea and worldview in my mind; staying rooted in my mind and making it’s indelible excellence in it. It is an example of works that transcend boundaries; of media, enviroments and even plot holes. The fact that the ending is kept ambiguous^*3 is icing on the cake.

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¹One of the interesting similarities I noticed with Inception and Evangelion is the concept of a whitespace – a Limbo – that is the depths of our subconscious and can be molded and shaped by the characters themselves. It’s also interesting to note that whenever characters in Inception dive down to Limbo, they end up on a shoreline, which instantly recalls to me the memories of EoE’s enigmatic ending. Not actually a surprising similarity but Christopher Nolan uses it in a more utilitarian manner than Anno did, although Anno’s creations arguably had a more grounded reality compared to Inception, relatively speaking.

²Forgive the liberal usage of “reality” here, but in a sense, the ideas are relatively similar between both works. The dreams in Inception are the mind’s subconscious constructs, while in Ibis the Layers are also similar excepting that it is created by the AI’s own self-conscious programmings based on their learning experiences. I really should finish that Ibis article languishing in my Drafts folder for a month or two, by now.

³I believe that the top eventually stopped spinning. I must add that the totem idea was severely underutilized in Inception.

Even during the zombie apocalypse, it’s always important for girls to maintain their personal hygiene!

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