I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to think of Maria+Holic. On the one hand, it’s SHAFT and it’s Shinbo and it’s the sort of comedy that appeals to me: completely jarring and random. On the other hand, it doesn’t really go anywhere and, unlike Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, it feels like it should. At first, I was apprehensive about taking a look because the summary didn’t interest me in the slightest. I obviously ended up taking a look and staying.

Why did I stay? Partially because of the crazy SHAFT style, with its schizophrenic style, its ADD scene cuts, and the walls of text that the characters go through. I also really liked some of the characters. God, Matsurika, and Mariya made the show for me. As for the other characters, other than Kanako, the episodic nature of the show didn’t really help develop them. Unlike in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, the other side characters aren’t distinct enough to be interesting by showing up once in a while.

But really, the most awesome part of the show was the OP and the ED. KIMI NI MUNE KYUN (KYUN). It wasn’t really bad and I don’t really regret watching it, since it was a lighter season for me. If you like Shinbo, it’s worth a watch.

It’s not a huge secret that most people weren’t pleased with Minami-ke Okawari. For reasons unknown, Okawari was produced by a different studio and the two seasons aired back to back. It wouldn’t have been too bad, but the writing and animation styles were completely different, and the change was made even more jarring because the two seasons aired within a week of each other and the fact that everyone adored the first season.

I remember getting cautiously excited when it was rumoured that Kyoto Animation would be producing the third season of Minami-ke. Shortly after, I had to lower my expectations once I discovered asread would be doing it again. It’s puzzling to me why asread was allowed to continue with it, even when there was a studio that managed to do Minami-ke right.

I will credit asread with being able to listen to criticism. There’s really no other reason for the writing changes in Okaeri. It’s pretty much what everyone asked for: more other Minami family, less shoehorning in every character into every episode, no annoying out-of-place original characters, and no forced drama. This is enough of an improvement that it puts Okaeri above Okawari.

And yet, even with all of these changes, it still feels like Okaeri’s missing whatever made the first season so special. Okaeri feels like a Minami-ke clone as opposed to the real deal. Okaeri’s OP tries to be like the first season’s OP, but falls short. The teardrop mouths try to make a comeback, but they don’t look like they fit. It’s the uncanny valley effect. Everything’s almost close enough, but the razor-thin separation from the likeness of the first season makes us recoil.

So to me, Okaeri is acceptable. It’s alright. It doesn’t invoke revulsion like Okawari did. It doesn’t compel me to heap praise upon it like the first season did. It just sort of sits there and I watch it and sometimes I’ll get some entertainment out of it. Like Soul Eater, it’s disappointing not in what it does, but what it could have done.

Soul Eater evokes memories of the first Fullmetal Alchemist for me. This shouldn’t be too surprising. Both are popular shounen manga that are serialized monthly, and even in the same magazine. Both have been adapted into anime by the same studio, BONES. Both adaptations have fantastic productions values. Both adaptations suffer from original content.

One of the problems that you run into when adapting an ongoing manga into an anime is that the anime moves faster than the manga. There are a number of hacks to get around this. I don’t think any of them have been well received.

The first way to do this is to attempt to animate the entire thing. The big, recognizable shounen series do this, like Dragonball and Naruto. The problem with this is that no matter how far ahead the manga is, the anime will always catch up, and when that happens, what are you supposed to do? The way this usually happens is by writing filler material, either before you catch up or when you catch up. This never works. In the case of Rurouni Kenshin, it ended the anime prematurely. In the case of Naruto, it caused almost two years of non-canon material, driving many away.

The alternative, which I theorize works better, would be to animate a season or two, and then stop and wait before animating any more. This was the approach taken by JC Staff with Shakugan no Shana. The problem with Shana Second is that they still ended up having to write bad original content even after waiting for a year. At this point, it’s not clear what they’re going to do with it, since they’ve written themselves into a corner and Shana is pretty popular. Otherwise, I’d say this is the best course of action.

There’s another option, which is to set a bound on the number of episodes, adapt as much as you can, and then fill the end with an original ending. This is what BONES did with FMA and Soul Eater. The problem with this approach is that the anime ending will be compared to what happened in the manga. In most cases, the manga will be superior in terms of development. This makes sense, since the characters have more time to undergo development and there’s more time to develop a more intricate plot. The other problem is that this closes the door on any adaptation of the later parts, unless you pull an FMA and remake the entire thing from the beginning.

Soul Eater suffers not because its anime-original end arc is bad, but because it’s not as good as what’s in the manga. Unfortunately, there is some really cool stuff that happens in the manga that we’ll likely never see because of the anime-original ending. The characters and the world get much more development and the events that take place are a lot less contrived.

It’s unfortunate that it’ll have to live in the shadow of the manga, because I really enjoyed the anime. The animation for the fights was awesome and the music, done by the guy who handled music for Gurren Lagann, was excellent too. Most of the disappointment comes from what could have been rather than anything it did wrong.