アニ・ノート

RIUVA:

Now, having seen the first episode of the sequel to Aegis of Uruk, the Sword of Uruk, I’m totally convinced it’ll be another fun season of job classes, epic RPG style battles and some romantic comedy. It’s great anime, that’s for sure. The only problem is GONZO’s dying as we speak, and I’m not sure the Sword of Uruk’ll be that much of a success as Strike Witches was.

The latter was terrible, but apparently has great sales. This really speaks volumes about otaku taste, doesn’t it? They buy the DVD just to see uncensored tits! Thankfully, GONZO sneaks in some censored nipples into Druaga as well, which should insure some sort of income for the series.

I have to disagree with our master of baiting here. Strike Witches was not terrible, its fanservice was. Or, as I mentioned before, “In Strike Witches, the key idea is to pound into viewers’ minds that no matter what is shown on the screen, it’s completely natural and acceptabe in the other world… so, tough it out, suckers!” It’s completely baseless to presuppose that fans bought DVDs because of the de-censoring. Maybe they wanted to see Minna Wilke singing in the red dress (CV: Rie Tanaka)! Secondly, according to John @Animenation, “[] Japanese government’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs has recognized the Strike Witches TV series as one of 2008’s best anime” (I think I heard of it by myself too, but I don’t have links handy).

Because of the above, I’m not sure how much stock we can put into TJ’s assessement of Druaga. I liked both the Uruk (sans the fillers) and Sword 01.

The King of Episodic Blogging have spoken, and he’s not displeased. One thing:

[] who was that red-haired woman looking [through the window] at Kaaya at the beginning? The only person I could think of with that color hair is Ahmey, but I really don’t want them to magically revive her character.

Good question. It’s not necesserily Ahmey. Can be anyone, like Kaaya’s mother. And as for the revival, this is not DBZ. Personally, I would not mind, if not overdone. Remember Vandread and Gascoyne? If we take the hypothesis seriously that GONZO has not progressed since making Vandread… And history always repeats itself. Maybe this is the time of farce.

I knew about Hinano’s international shopping since she twittered: “omg my bra from Japan came! that was fast! and it’s cheaper and nicer than if I got it at Victoria’s secret!”

God, I so love capitalism. The same invisible hand that has built airplanes, airports, banks, credit cards, and warehouses supplies Hinano with bra and myself with R2 DVDs. I still remember what it took to import anything through the iron curtain. My mother obtained a can of peanut butter once. Anyway, here to the progress and Hinano’s bra.

Lelangir was making noises about meta and confusion (no permalink, it’s mostly Twitter). The confusion, however, is only that of implicit definitions and multiply meanings. Certainly the very concept of an anime blog is a meta towards the anime (Meta Level 0). When I quote, say, Beta-Waffle, it’s meta towards another blog (Meta Level 1). And if I blog about the way I quote Beta-Waffle, it’s Meta Level 2 — which is what the “meta” category is here. It was never documented until now, of course. In general, categories suffer from poor definiton and slippage. The “bost” category means “my personal crusade for DRM-free DTO” (although it is also a memorial to the early DRO-minus-DRM pioneer BOST TV, R.I.P.).

Tangentially, he’s quoting Stuart Hall instead of some stupid asshole like Edward Said, which is always a plus in my book.

I wonder if a commenter at Subculture (careful, Totali heavily spoils Toradora 14) is a troll or confused:

how are you able to understand japanses? i can’t watch it without subs alone. i wonder how you are able to understand all of this?

In either case, it kinda makes mockery of the raw debate.

Originally Piano was recommended to me by a reader Piyo-kun. It was more than two years ago, but DVDs are tricking down now and Evirus is on the case:

I still can’t believe RightStuf licensed Piano. I hope I’m not the only person to have bought the DVDs.

He may be. I’m counting on Netflix. I wonder how the revenue sharing works, considering that Netflix is a flat-rated subscription service.

Evirus’ description generally makes Piano sounds a bit like The World of Narue, but no worries. I am sure there’s not going to be the skirt-raising wind in space this time around.

At last! I’m later than anyone, including Otou.

The strange thing is, I don’t have anything in particular to say, despite the anime being so well regarded. It’s a decent show, and might be the best Magical Girl show I’ve seen, but otherwise it’s just a good anime and that’s it. I only noticed that the perverted squirrel was quite funny; I wish he took lessons from Boota. Bet nothing will come out of it, not even anything like in 12 Kingdoms.

A visit to Best Buy ended with picking a few volumes.

As usual, new detail comes up, and in general it’s an enjoyable experience. However, I have a very strange feeling that some scenes are shorter for DVD release than they were in the broadcast. For example, Miyuki’s eyedrops in ep.10.

I don’t even want to post another “BOST Death Watch” entry, the situation is quite obvious. So, the Crunchyroll. I do not quite understand why GONZO allows them to show The Tower of Druaga, Sword of Uruk without any in-video ads. Wasn’t GONZO on the brink of bankrupcy? Maybe GONZO counts on merchandizing fees in the future.

The episode itself was quite nice, and it looks like the show goes where it went before. Good times.

It appears to me that GONZO has developed a specific animation style with very minimal presentation. They draw as little as possible and skirt the border of unacceptable as tightly as possible. It was noticeable in the Druaga:Aegis too, but then Strike Witches came along and I forgot about it. Now the innovative cost-cutting is in full display again. I’m not sure if I approve, but then I’ve enjoyed much of Yoakena. So let a thousand of flowers bloom and watch which ones bring fruit.

Minorin was my least favourite among the cast of Toradora (mind, I stopped before seeing Taiga’s father), but I cannot help noticing the fan comic posted by Nova (among others — I saw it on 4chan before). It is something like the dreams of fanboys everywhere. So cute. BTW, is this left to right or right to left? It reads both ways!

The tears, they just keep flowing.

I wish there was a remake of it with a better artwork. Coincidentially, Sixten is a fan. One can hope.

THEBIGN e-mails with:

I actually don’t like the premise of the strip. Partly because I don’t want to see Minorin sad (yay fanboyism), and partly because I feel like that idea’s been done to death (Can’t they think of any other way to show her pain?), and worry that the anime or the novels might take that route (it’s too obvious a way to go :P).

Well, no pain no gain. The point of the strip is, Minorin must be retarded not to take the denials of the main duo seriously and check if there’s an opening, while she still has time.