Cinnamon Ass

Dennou Coil

Sure, it didn’t turn out to be anything like I or many others thought it would, but as I’ve already written Dennou Coil is my favourite show of the year. For sheer consistency of entertainment in almost every way it can’t be beaten; an astonishing achievement in a show that should appeal to almost everyone, and its surprisingly high ranking in Omni’s reader poll reflects that. If you haven’t watched it, why not? Put your dennou megane on and GO GO GO!

Emma - The Second Act

I guess I’m never satisfied. To painfully labour a metaphor, I got to have my cake AND eat it, except that I’m not sure if I really wanted to eat it after all. I was very pleasantly surprised when Emma got a second series, but The Second Act doesn’t have anywhere near the emotional impact of the first season’s bittersweet romance; it’s all a bit pat, as there’s nowhere for the show to go other than to keep forcing and breaking Emma and William apart for multiple episodes. Despite the introduction of several new and interesting supporting characters, The Second Act just wasn’t as moving; scenes from the first season still stay with me, whereas I struggle to remember anything that particularly affected me from the second season.

But hey, it moved me to cod-Dickensian writing. It wasn’t THAT bad.

Nodame Cantabile

As others seem to feel, Nodame Cantabile is bound up with much more complex personal issues for me. To make the (unavoidable, and perhaps unfair) comparisons with Kenichi Kasai’s earlier Noitamina show, Honey and Clover was about the choices we all make; Nodame Cantabile is a show about the path that most of us avoid. Takemoto and co are the realists; they funnel their creative side into commercial endeavours and subsume their art for their lives. Nodame and Chiaki are the idealists; they may never make it as musicians despite their prodigious talents, but they keep going regardless because it’s what matters most to them.

I’m a realist, unashamedly. We all have to live and be grown up about things, and we all make compromises to do so; I’m very lucky that with a lot of careful planning, hard work and a bit of luck I should be able to have a career that allows me the best of both worlds. But there’s always the nagging question - what if?

Nodame Cantabile as a show in itself isn’t nearly as excellent as it became in my eyes, the awesomeness of its lead characters and direction not withstanding. It wastes its supporting characters and the pace frequently dips; if it hadn’t been about music I probably would have got bored and moved on.

I didn’t, though.

Red Garden

If only every anime series could be planned years in advance. Red Garden is a good show, but it really would have benefitted from having the production team sit around and work out exactly where the show was going to go by the 24th episode so we might have had a consistent tone all the way through, rather than the show shifting somewhat awkwardly from horror to thriller and in between throughout.

My abiding image of the show is the first episode’s absolutely terrifying climactic battle sequence, a sequence which the show never really lived up to again. The show only really needs a few tweaks here and there - give Rose a better (shorter?) character arc for instance, or ditch the singing - and Red Garden would have been much better for it. As it is, it’s a raw idea executed pretty decently but a little patchily.

I haven’t watched the Dead Girls OVA spinoff. I don’t know if I ever will. Make of that what you will.

Seirei no Moribito

Just typing the above three words is enough to make me stop and think. I wrote a very lengthy piece on what I thought was wrong with Seirei no Moribito when I originally finished watching it, but I’m still not satisfied that I’ve resolved it in my head. Going back over the series in my head the only thing that really disappointed me was the giant toothy tulip monsters, and that’s just one “character” design. Time has obviously distanced me significantly from the show and absence has obviously made my heart grow a little fonder…

Curiously, watching the first episode of Macross Frontier reminded me of SnM. As one commenter mentioned, Macross is perhaps too polished; it’s as if they’ve thought for so long about how to put the show together that even though it’s all really well done that little spark of individuality doesn’t seem to be there. I can hardly say that SnM isn’t individual (decent serious fantasy is an increasingly rare commodity in anime and manga) but it does give off a similar vibe to an extent.

Ah well, I’ll stop rehashing old arguments now.

The Skull Man

Not sure what to say about Skull Man, really. It was good - very good, even. However, it’s left absolutely no lasting impression on me whatsoever. Reading back through the archives reminds me of the quality of the set-pieces, and there was some good action towards the end, but otherwise Skull Man is a bit of a non-entity; as I said back in August, “lost in the annals of Bones history”.

Essentially, I liked Skull Man for its plot. For whatever reason, I didn’t ever really get that emotionally attached to any of the characters; the supporting cast didn’t get much in the way of important screentime (never mind the fact that I couldn’t remember their names most of the time!), Hayato and Sayoko drove the story forward (occasionally) but weren’t exactly burdened with memorable personalities, and the last third of the series junked any pretence the show had of being investigative in favour of giant flamethrower-wielding war veterans in cyborg armour blowing up werewolves. Which was fun and all, but…

Interestingly, reading back over my final thoughts reveals I didn’t actually even mention the characters aside from “the voice acting was decent”. Rather telling, don’t you think?

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Season 1

Tokyo Majin Gakuen is probably as good as any RPG-to-anime adaptation will ever be. With its emphasis on flashy fight sequences I was nicely distracted from the cookie-cutter characterisation (I even liked most of them!) and predictable plot direction. Any attempt to scrutinise the series will most likely make the whole, weirdass-Buddhist-eye-containing enchilada fall apart around me, so I’m going to continue to think it was pretty damn good and live in denial.

I should really get around to buying the DVDs, as Animax’s broadcast quality is so abysmally poor. Much like the second season’s ending is supposed to be, hyuk hyuk!

Terra E…

The first word that springs to mind is “quaint”. Not “epic”, as it should do, but “quaint”. Even though Toward the Terra is a big, epic and effective (well, in the end, after a rocky start) sci-fi show, the first image that sprung to mind when I thought of the show wasn’t Jomy, or Keith, or even my favourite character (Suena, of course. I like to be different.) but from one of the episodes in the middle of the show before the shit really starts to hit the fan. Without wishing to spoil things greatly, it’s a scene of the Mu just… living. They’re getting on with their lives as they currently stand in relative peace. Whether it was the framing of the shot, or the music, or the nice background art, I really don’t know.

“Just living” is of course exactly what Toward the Terra aims to be about. The Mu just want to get on with their lives; their weariness at their constant flight, their despair as Keith ruins their plans and drives them to ever more extreme measures…it’s the plain humanity of Toward the Terra that makes it such an effective show.

Even if I still don’t understand why Keith kept Matsuka around for so long…

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Currently Watching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.