Gundam is kind of a big deal. The last big Gundam was Gundam SEED Destiny, which itself was a direct sequel to Gundam SEED. So it’s been a while since we’ve seen a new Gundam.

Gundam 00 takes the opportunity to do a few things differently. For one thing, it’s made for HD, which means that it’s super pretty to watch, with all the glowing green particle trails and the Trans-AM pinkish shifting. The other was that it’s the first Gundam to be set in the “real world” timeline with a recognizable geopolitical situation. Sure, the Advanced European Union is hilarious, but it’s not so far removed as the usual space vs. Earth conflict we’ve seen since forever.

We all know SEED was supposed to be some sort of modern version of UC, with some really obvious parallels (oh look, a Zaku). The same can’t be said of 00. I know people were all like ‘lolol four Gundam meisters => Gundam Wing’ and ‘A-LAWS => Titans’. This mostly has to do with the fact that Celestial Being are an autonomous organization and aren’t operatives of one side of the usual space vs. Earth thing.

The end of the first season made it sound like the second season would be all about Earth vs. space, what with the whole colony building and “Earth Federation” thing going on. Luckily, that didn’t happen. Instead, we got some stuff about the evolution of humanity. I suppose it’s kind of the Newtype thing, but there is no superior space race.

It took me a long time to warm up to Gundam 00. In fact, I didn’t really like it until the second season started. I wasn’t really a fan of the dynamics between the characters in the first season and I didn’t like how most episodes were focused on the geopolitical situation of the world instead of telling us about the characters. The Gundam meisters weren’t really likable, the crew of the Ptolemy were stupid, and most of the opposition was one-dimensional.

A lot of the characters played a role that wasn’t really explored or given enough detail. What was the point of the three new meisters? What was the point of Wang Liu Mei? The Innovators were kind of a threat before Setsuna started lopping them off effortlessly. Why was there the whole Saji and Louise side plot? What role did Marina and Azadistan play? All of these characters arguably did something, but they all seemed very tangential to the main plot.

The second season invoked memories of Code Geass R2, as it revealed shocking revelation after shocking revelation. Innovators! Aeolia’s real plan for CB! He’s an Innovator! She’s an Innovator! GN particle-verse! Innovators aren’t Innovators! He’s a real Innovator! Aeolia’s real, real plan! Aliens! Jupiter!

I will say that the final battle between Setsuna and Ribbons was fantastic. Best fight sequence of the series.

So I guess if you are in the market for Gundam, Gundam 00 is an acceptable choice.

I remember that before Toradora started airing, the general opinion of it was “I liked it better when it was called Zero no Tsukaima”. Here, we are presented with yet another show featuring a Kugimiya Rie tsundere lead, with the fact that she is violent written right into her character. Ryuuji’s description didn’t seem to be much more than the typical useless male lead. It wasn’t hard to extrapolate what would happen by the end based on the title and the premise, that they’re try to help each other get together with the other’s best friend.

Clearly, it turned out to be more than everyone’s worst fears. How did Toradora manage to fight against all odds and end up being something good? It had interesting characters and they all worked together pretty well. Most of them managed to not get stuck into the same characters we’ve seen before.

Taiga managed to drop the most of the overt violence pretty early. Ryuuji turned out to be not useless and amusingly OCD. Ami was an awesome surprise, often showing up to dispense her sarcastic and insightful opinion. Kitamura was pretty typical except for the weird crap that he does. Interestingly enough, I’d say that it’s probably Minori who was the closest to what people predicted she’d be: the girl who seems to be ‘lol so random’ and suppresses what she’s really feeling.

That’s not to say Toradora went off without a hitch. There were points that I thought were stupid, but those managed to be saved not too long afterward by something great happening. There was some criticism of the more ‘emo’ parts, but I didn’t really mind those. It’s not like I was expecting everything to be hilarious all the time.

The part that bugged me the most was everything that happened in episode 24. This seemed to be part in which the pacing was the worst and basically left everyone going ‘what’. There were points before where I found the pacing really weird and I know that there’s been a lot of discussion over what JC Staff has cut. I’ve come up with the theory that JC Staff doesn’t understand the concept of time, which explains such adaptations as Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter, the last few episodes of Toradora, and Shakugan no Shana Second.

Despite all of that though, the way Toradora ended satisfied me well enough. I really liked the characters and it’s certainly fared better than most adaptations, especially with the coordination of the ending with the light novel. I don’t think there’s anything quite like it. Would I tell people to check it out? Definitely.

I went into RideBack fairly hesitantly because I could sort of foresee what was coming. I mean, robot bike with arms and civil rights? Really? But, given the generally positive things that were mentioned on the various boards I frequent, I decided to give it a shot.

And for the first few episodes, I was pleasantly surprised. Rin was kind of interesting, what with being an injured ballet prodigy who takes a liking to this weird bike with arms. The racing part and Rin discovering her new hobby were also pretty cool.

And then the real story started.

The real story is hard to take seriously. This is a problem when they want you to take it seriously. I’m pretty sure that when they made Rin bust through the military blockade and save Shouko, they wanted us to focus on how awesome Rin is. Instead, I was thinking about how retarded Rin must be to think about plowing through armed soldiers and how retarded the soldiers must be for them to shoot at and miss her while charged straight at them and flipped through the air right above them.

And then we have the obviously evil government oppressing the people by being excessively violent against a bunch of delinquents. Am I supposed to feel sorry for these guys? They’re going around wrecking stuff, and sure, the government whacked the hell out of them, but they’re not exactly the target that gets the most sympathy. I hear that something happened recently that made it clear that the government was harsh and oppressive, in case we missed the first time they decided to violently quell dissent.

And finally, there’s this stupid symbolism associated with the RideBack. Apparently, bikes with arms are the most devastating weapon that man’s come up with. Also, RideBacks are like horses and magical mecha and the best of them choose their riders. And it glows with the light of GN particles and light orbs. Maybe that’s where RideBack is going. RideBacks grant Rin’s wishes and unites humanity.

If I were loafing around, I’d probably stick with it until the end. But, well, I have stuff to do, and RideBack is a lot less interesting than my schoolwork. That’s right, bikes with arms are less exciting than debugging file operations.

So after Nanoha A’s comes Nanoha StrikerS. StrikerS is not A’s. In fact, StrikerS is barely Nanoha. It’s amazingly different from the two series that precede it to the point that it is repulsed on instinct by a number of people who were expecting more explosions and friendship. Before, Nanoha could barely be considered a very different sort of mahou shoujo. StrikerS is definitely not mahou shoujo.

Gone are the scenes of normality of school or Nanoha’s family. Instead we have military and political drama. Instead of going around collecting jewel seeds, we’re sortieing in squads and communicating with callsigns. Instead of a normal girl accidentally caught up in a sinister scheme, we’ve got a bunch of characters with tragic pasts. And most noticeable of all, the spotlight is taken off Nanoha and put on our bunch of rookie forwards.

What does StrikerS retain from the previous series? Well, explosions and friendship. We get more of Nanoha and Fate and the Wolkenkritter being awesome and unleashing devastating firepower.

Unfortunately, the series suffers from one big problem: the characters. There are way too many of them. For whatever reason, a huge number of the side characters play a role in the story. This also means that there isn’t enough time to properly develop all of them. Of course, the four forwards get the most attention and they’re probably the most well done. But, there isn’t any reason for sniper/pilot guy to have that backstory, there isn’t any reason for that bad military inside baseball, and there isn’t any reason for there to be so many Numbers. As a result, a lot of the show feels like a giant mess of characters, with the villains having very shallow motivations.

Is StrikerS bad? I don’t think so. Even though the pacing was weird and there were a billion different plot threads, it was still fairly entertaining. The main characters were alright, even if the villains were terrible. And we can’t forget the DIVINE BUSTER.

Clannad is about family. This is something that sort of gets beaten into you throughout the course of the show. This very important to understanding just what the hell goes on.

I understand why Clannad got split into two seasons, since following year-long shows is kind of tiring, but the two halves of After Story were jarringly different. It might have been better for flow to have kept it all together so that the school life stuff could be put together without it feeling like there were a few extra leftover arcs at the beginning of After Story. In fact, in my mind, I sort of lump the first half of After Story with the first season of Clannad and the actual After Story with After Story.

Visual novel adaptations are hard. Visual novels are not linear and when something like Clannad exploits that structure, serializing it is made even harder. Because my superpower is not caring about spoilers, I’ve read a lot of stuff about the visual novel and what the ending is supposed to mean. And the ending is one of those things that exploits the structure of the visual novel.

Outside of the context of the visual novel and paths and whatever, the ending is very deus ex machina. I mean, we get a’splosion, some talking, and then Tomoya “wakes up” at the critical moment but everything is bright and we get a happy ending. It’s sort of like the first time you go through Higurashi. You become disoriented and wonder what the hell just happened.

So two things are key to understanding the ending. The first is that Clannad is about family. The second is that Clannad is a visual novel.

What we got in the anime was the true end. So what was the bad end? The bad end was if there were no deus ex machina. So in a sense, we got to see both ends. But what’s the prerequisite for the true end? The anime almost makes it look like it was the decision to call out to Nagisa. In fact, what’s required is that you have enough light orbs.

The light orbs are explained as the happiness of others. They also happen to be a gameplay mechanic. Once you finish an arc, you get a light orb. This seems like it’s just a way to get you to play all of the paths. The function of the light orbs isn’t that obvious, since Yukine sort of explains it offhandedly and Ushio seeing the light orb enter Tomoya didn’t really spell anything out. Even after Ushio’s explanation in the imaginary world, it isn’t clear that Tomoya was collecting these things.

After all, why would Ushio’s and Nagisa’s fate be tied to these light orbs instead of meeting Nagisa? Why is it impossible to save Ushio and Nagisa without playing all the other arcs? Remember what Tomoya says and what he’s like when we’re first introduced to him. He hates the city he lives in. He has no understanding of what a family is. He continues to hate the city all the way until the end. Upon your first time reaching the end, in the imaginary world, Ushio sends you back to collect light orbs.

Through collecting the light orbs and finishing the various paths, which we see accumulating in the anime at the episode title screen, Tomoya learns what family is. Only after finishing all the other paths is he able to come around to the fact that the town that he hated, which also happens to be some town that grants peoples’ wishes, is a giant family. And only after he learns all of this is he able to save his family.

Obviously, this isn’t as easy to show in the anime. In the anime, our experience with the true end happens right after the bad end and is fairly abrupt. In the visual novel, Tomoya works his way to the bad end and realizes that there’s no way to avoid it except to collect the light orbs. He is then set on the arduous task of collecting these light orbs, while keeping in mind that he’s working to save Nagisa and Ushio, knowing what will happen if he fails.

All things considered, KyoAni did a pretty good job with the ending. The last episode played out almost exactly how I predicted they’d do it. Now that it’s over, I can see why Clannad is considered Key’s best work. I can safely say it’s the best Key anime adaptation.