less blkmage

So I noticed that I’ve been finishing the old animes at about a pace of one per week in addition to whatever I’m watching that’s airing right now, especially since I learned to manage my bandwidth better. I guess that makes it a good excuse to make this a weekly feature, at least until I start 3A and get beat’d by a triumvirate of CS courses. I guess when that happens, I’ll just not-stfu about everything all the shows that I’ve wanted to talk about but missed. There are a lot of those drafts sitting around. Since Clannad, I’ve gone through Kanon and Spice and Wolf. So this week is the fourth since then, which brings us to ef - a tale of memories.

ef is another one of those visual novel adaptations that I’ve tried to avoid but am now getting around to them for lack of anything else to watch. The VN that it’s based on is divided into four different stories and ef goes through two of them. Notice that this season, ef - a tale of melodies is airing, which goes through the other two stories. The entire thing has a very different feel from Key VNs, which at this point, together with School Days which I would prefer not to bring up, are the only points of reference I have to this genre.

Actually, the entire thing isn’t really comparable. Yeah, there’s drama and romance and they try to make you BAWWWW, but that’s about it. The structure of the plot is completely different, focussing on several different stories going on instead of going through several arcs with the main character at the centre of everything. The real striking difference is in the presentation.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, which was done by the same studio, had a really crazy artistic and visual style for a comedy. Just take a look at the OP and ED. Now take that style and add some symbolism, some significance and importance to the plot, and apply it to a show with drama and romance. There are tons of jarring cuts to scenes of seemingly random stuff that grow into something very powerful. Like SZS, the best way to get a feel for the show is by having a look at the OPs and EDs.

And part of the presentation package is music. Let’s be honest, the Key VN anime’s strong points do not include their music, save for the occasional fluke. But in ef, the music fits right in with the crazy visuals. The entire thing is finely tuned and deliberate.

Thematically, ef is a lot heavier than Clannad. Because of the visuals, there’s a lot of symbolism going on. Because of the circumstances of the characters, there’s a lot less focus on them and just being in school or walking around the shopping district. Clannad and Kanon were very similar in that there was a guy that just went around solving the problems that the girls they met had. Eventually, the focus came down to only one girl. Here, we’re able to see how the different themes play out at about the same pace, since we’re focussing on more than one relationship progressing.

Basically, it’s an impressive, fairly thoughtful drama filled with tons of symbolism and imagery in crazy ZETSUBOUSHITA style. I’ll be watching ef - a tale of melodies, but I don’t know if I care about the other two characters’ stories as much. But, I will have to amend my post about this season’s OPs, because ef melodies has an awesome OP, ebullient future, that places second, in between Hakanaku mo Towa no Kanashi and Toki wo Kizamu Uta.

Now that the little distraction that was the American Presidential election is now over and we’re all feeling chipper that Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, we can roll our eyes back towards this land of ice and snow and start killing snow moose for walrus-men consider the political dynamic here.

On October 14th, Canada held its 40th General Election. On the surface, it seemed like nothing changed. Seats were flipped and Stephen Harper remains a Prime Minister with a minority, just as it had been since 2006. But for the two major players, the Conservatives and the Liberals, everything has gotten considerably worse.

Yes, Stephen Harper managed to get the Conservatives another term in power and even gained a bunch of seats. But, he’s failed to get a majority after facing a severely weakened Liberal party twice. He couldn’t do it against Paul Martin and a Liberal party that was caught in a scandal. He couldn’t do it against Stephane Dion, even after controlling the narrative about Dion being a weak leader and shoving misinformation to everyone about the Green Shift. It’s becoming less likely that he’ll see the majority that he’s been fighting for since he became leader. This draws us to consider who might be succeeding him and it appears that there’s no one obvious yet. This will be a problem for them.

On the other hand, the Liberals couldn’t be in worse shape. Most of the seats that were changed were ones that were red. The party is in a poor state financially and with another leadership race so soon after the last one, the strain on the monies will only get worse. The party’s share of the popular vote is getting gobbled up by the NDP. The chances that the Liberals go the way of the Progressive Conservatives is getting larger and larger and the next leader will be determining whether the Liberals survive or not.

And that brings us to the Liberal leadership race. Immediately, we’re faced again with Michael Ignatieff facing off against Bob Rae, but things are looking a bit different today than it was two years ago. For one thing, there isn’t the cornucopia of candidates running. This time, we aren’t seeing the bitter divides between the two frontrunner camps that plagued the last race. It looks like the Liberals have realized the situation they’re in. And in addition to the sombre mood of the party, there’s the sombre mood regarding the economy.

These two factors greatly reduce the chance of anything like Dion’s from-behind victory from happening again. On the other hand, from the endorsements and support that he’s been getting, it looks like the party is almost ready to just hand Michael Ignatieff the leadership. On the plus side, it doesn’t seem like there will be an irreparable rift between the two frontrunner campaigns this time around. However, I’m not happy with the near-presumption that Ignatieff will just take a stroll until May and win. I think he should have to fight for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be getting much of one.

I’ve honestly never understood how it was possible for Bob Rae to become a serious contender to lead the Liberals. I know he’s smart and has all the qualities for the job and it looks like a lot of Liberals do too. But outside of that, there are too many people who have a dislike for him, regardless of whether or not he deserves it. It doesn’t matter if he’s changed his positions or that he may have done the best he could in the early 90s, you can bet that the Conservatives will attack that angle relentlessly. Just look at how they controlled Dion’s image.

The other guy is Dominic LeBlanc. He’s young, smart, and is apparently a fine MP. His biggest challenge is the fact that we’ve been hearing nonstop about Rae and Ignatieff for over two years now, while he’s relatively unknown nationally.

I guess it’s fairly obvious who I think should be the next leader of the Liberals by default. But I will qualify that by revisiting the 2006 leadership race. In 2006, I thought Gerard Kennedy should be the leader. He swung more to the left side of the party and had a pretty good record. As the Minister of Education in Ontario, he did a lot to fix the screwups that are the reason that Mike Harris is so reviled by students.

Michael Ignatieff on the other hand was not those things. He’s definitely more of a centrist. His initial support for the Iraq war threw a wrench in his campaign. But most importantly, he was a very new MP and had just returned from the States. Before his return and shortly after it, there was speculation that he returned to try to run for the leadership of the Liberals. The question to me was why we would want someone who came back just to do that?

Two years later, through his time as an MP, we’ve learned a lot more about him. He’s definitely intelligent, but more importantly, he’s also very articulate. Despite being away from Canada for so long, he has an excellent understanding of the national culture. He’s got a vision for Canada, as a nation and for our standing in the world. He has the progressive values that the Liberals stand for. He’s not one of the old-school guys from one of Chretien’s or Martin’s camps. He’s got the support of the party. He understands that the party desperately needs to be transformed and rebuilt. And he’s likely not going to get trapped and smeared by the same Conservative strategy that took down Dion.

He’s someone I can respect and someone who’ll probably be able to make me switch my vote back to red.

I like watching openings when I can. They set up the show and are generally a decent indicator of the quality of a show. Of course, there are times when this is horribly wrong, but still. The other nice thing it does is introduce music. And tomorrow happens to be the day that Toki wo Kizamu Uta, the CLANNAD After Story OP single is being released. So, let’s start from the bottom.

Not really considered to be a part of this season is the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OAD, which also includes a not-new OP, the venerable Kuusou Rumba, with new and improved disturbing opening animation sequences that lets it get in here for an honourable mention. Ga-Rei Zero also gets an honourable mention for having no OP until the fourth episode, by which point I’d dropped it because of its shenanigans.

The most bizarre and probably likely to offend someone OP award goes to Kemeko DX, which includes a scene of the characters reenacting the road to Calvary with the line JESUS, JESUS, JESUS KAMI-SAMAAAAAAA. Tytania’s OP, Ano Sora wo, Yuke, also gets a weird look for being some sort of operatic tune sung by a Japanese guy, with the stoic looking characters and explosions happening in the animation.

Casshern Sins’ OP, Aoi Hana, is pretty old school, which is a nice fit for an anime that’s a reboot of a show from the 70s. Toradora!’s Pre-Parade is a colourful, weird sort of techno-pop-ish kind of thing that matches the hilarious nature of the show. Kannagi gets a mention with motto☆Hade ni ne! for excellent OP with high production values that may or may not have to do with the show. And Kuroshitsuji’s dark England sort of feel is portrayed well with Kiss of Monochrome.

And now, we’ll take a look at the four OPs that I must have and eagerly await the releases of the singles for.

Lagging behind the rest is Soul Eater’s second OP, PAPERMOON by tommy heavenly6. She may sound familiar and you wouldn’t be wrong, since she’s the lead singer for the brilliant green. They might also sound familiar, because they did a song called Ash Like Snow for some obscure anime that you might have heard about called Mobile Suit Gundam 00. PAPERMOON isn’t too bad if you enjoyed Ash Like Snow and the animation for the OP certainly isn’t weak. The problem is that compared to resonance, the song doesn’t really fit Soul Eater.

Coming up in third is Sky High!, the OP for Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter. The biggest problem with Sky High is that it isn’t Allegro Cantabile, which is a favourite of anyone who watched the first season. By its own right, it isn’t a bad song, but it didn’t meet our absurdly high expectations and nostalgia. That said, it’s a fine match for Nodame, especially during the Paris arc.

The runner-up is UVERworld’s Hakanaku mo Towa no Kanashi, the first OP for the second season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00. It falls right in place alongside Daybreak’s Bell and Ash Like Snow in terms of setting up for Gundam 00. I was actually fairly surprised to see UVERworld become so big, since the last time I cared about them was when they first showed up with D-Tecnolife, the second Bleach OP.

That leaves that song I already mentioned for first place. Yes, CLANNAD After Story’s OP, Toki wo Kizamu Uta, is my pick for the best OP this season. The first season’s OP, Megumeru ~cuckool mix 2007~, was a remix of the visual novel’s OP, which I guess is fairly clever. But, this song combined with the beautiful opening animation really sealed the deal for me. Or maybe it’s just because I’m clearly in the tank for CLANNAD. YOU DECIDE. Unfortunately, the ED isn’t as strong and definitely doesn’t compare to Dango Daikazoku.

It was back when I was in Seattle for PAX. It was Saturday night and since our hotel was about half an hour away from the convention centre, we decided to skip out on that night’s concerts. Even though I was looking forward to seeing Anamanaguchi, the Minibosses, MC Frontalot, and the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, the physically painful experience of attending the Friday night concerts was enough to persuade me from pushing for it. After all, Jonathan Coulton and the OneUps were awesome enough as it were.

Anyhow, we got back to the hotel at about 10 pm and realized that we hadn’t eaten yet, so we ordered some pizza from Pizza Hut, which I was thrilled with since that was during the height of Code Geass R2 mania. Anyhow, while were nom-nom-noming on delicious stuffed crust, we had the TV on. It was only two nights before that Obama gave his nomination acceptance speech in Denver. That night, CNN was running a documentary about Obama’s life from the start all the way up to present day.

The dream that I had when I fell asleep was unique in that I could clearly recount the details. I was at the White House and everyone was in like the garden or something sitting around a bunch of tables like you would at a cafe, and George W. Bush was addressing everyone there. Now, Bush being Bush, he was saying some garbage, the details of which I don’t remember. But, I did think what he said was incredibly stupid, so being the devastatingly sarcastic smartass that I am, I heckled him.

Understandably, Bush was pissed as hell that I was heckling him. He walked over, very angry-like and confrontational and overall had a fairly threatening composure. Of course, as luck would have it, Obama was at my table, and he noticed angry Bush approaching. He decided to step in and try and calm him down, but Bush wasn’t having any of it. So, Obama being the cool guy that he is, decides to swing back with an utterly devastating remark to Bush.

How did I know his remark was devastating? Because immediately, Bush looked absolutely dejected and he turned around and walked back to the stage slowly. And what would be an excellent burn without a high-five? So I gave Obama a high-five and we were very pleased with ourselves and smiling and all.

Congratulations, America and hi5, President Obama.

I’d told myself that I wouldn’t watch visual novel adaptations based on some negative stereotype of them that I conjured up. Of course, after watching Byousoku 5 Centimeters, I was in the mood for some more sadface anime. Of course, where else would I get more sadface than some good old visual novel adaptations?

It’s a good thing that I knew where to find some quality ones. Up until this point, I’d dabbled in two. Chaos;HEAD turned out to feature a ridiculously unlikable main character, so I dropped it almost immediately. And I watched School Days out of curiosity, and it lives up to the rumours that it ruins lives. So, I decided to head over to the well of VN adaptations that people won’t shut up about, Kyoto Animation.

Based on the summaries, I decided to go with Clannad. I ended up watching the entire thing in three days. The most surprising thing about Clannad was that none of the characters filled me with rage or made me facepalm. As expected, every episode couldn’t finish without some sort of drama happening, and also expected was the injection of some supernatural happenings. But, I found the characters pretty likable.

This is a big deal, of course. If either the main character or the entire cast pisses me off, that show gets dropped. At the same time, there aren’t too many shows that don’t have at least one character that makes me hate them. I like to point at Honey and Clover as an example of this. H&C has been praised and suggested to me as a quality anime. By all standards, I should be hopping on it without hesitation. It’s a slice of life anime mixed in with a bit of romance and focuses on students at an art school. But I can’t bring myself to keep on watching it because I find every single character annoying.

Anyhow, Clannad has put me over the edge with respect to Kyoani’s visual novel adaptations. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Kyoani’s work after Lucky Star finished. Clannad has also forced me to actually take a look at what Kyoani’s been doing. I had no idea that Haruhi was only the second thing they did, right after Air, or that Kanon came out right in between Haruhi and Lucky Star, or that Clannad came right after Lucky Star.

Anyhow, I am looking forward to the rest of Clannad After Story, which is actually currently airing. I have picked it up and caught up and I’m anticipating some major sadface moments. And finally, the dango daikazoku is awesome and anyone who disagrees is a terrible human being.