Monthly Archives: August 2009

True End: The Jinchuu Arc (Rurouni Kenshin)

Posted on by
Reply

It took me a few years, but I finally got around to finishing Rurouni Kenshin’s final arc.

I went through Kenshin fairly early on in my anime consumption, not too long after the likes of Naruto, Gundam SEED, and FMA. Essentially, I found the Tokyo arc pretty interesting, the Kyoto arc amazing, and the filler to be utter garbage, as was in line with what I’d heard. The prequel OVA was also amazing and having learned about how accurate the third arc opinions were, I decided to skip out on the epilogue OVAs as well.

While it’s not as spectacular as Kyoto, the thing about the Jinchuu arc is that it properly finishes Kenshin’s story. Before reading Jinchuu, I’d always pretended that Kenshin ended at Kyoto, so as to counteract the poisonous effect of the filler. After all, after sending his greatest enemy to hell, what else was there for Kenshin to do? He’d redeemed himself, right?

As it turns out, while defeating Shishio may have saved the country, Jinchuu deals with something that’s far more personal to Kenshin. It’s interesting that the prequel OVAs are pretty much universally regarded as the best animated part of Kenshin, both in production quality and writing. It’s the story of the OVAs that is the basis of the Jinchuu arc.

In a way, it’s sort of like The Scouring of the Shire. It doesn’t quite compare to the epic, world-saving adventure that directly preceded it, but it hits a lot closer to home. While they were off saving the world, this new threat sort of snuck up on them from out of nowhere. And while everyone helped Kenshin on the way in Kyoto, Jinchuu involves everyone much more. As a result, it’s not just Kenshin that gets his story wrapped up.

Basically, everyone who is fond of Kenshin and hasn’t read the Jinchuu arc needs to. It’s a much more satisfying conclusion than being disappointed by filler and pretending everything ended at Kyoto. It’s the right ending that such a great series deserves.

Not Naruto: shounen manga that I’m reading

Posted on by
1

My RL animu-knowledgeable friends will be interested to hear that shortly after the Pain arc finished up, I dropped Naruto for reals. I did this a few months before with Bleach. Both of these pretty much bored me to the point of not caring. No, I don’t care that Naruto became GARuto or whatever. I don’t care that the Vaizards might do something in the near future. I don’t care that Sasuke is still being whiny. I don’t care that Bleach has moved less than 24 hours in the last two years.

So what am I caring about?

Bakuman

As far as manga goes, Bakuman is pretty meta. It is a manga running in Shounen Jump by an artist/writer duo (of Death Note fame) about a manga running in Shounen Jump by an artist/writer duo. The good things about it are great writing and pacing (stuff actually happens and is interesting) and pretty neat art. The unique things that it brings are an inside look at the manga serialization process and a number of pretty cool original manga concepts that make up the manga series that are featured in that universe’s Shounen Jump.

Cross Game

Cross Game is a baseball and romance manga. It has a pretty heavy emphasis on the characters and their development outside of baseball, which is the most interesting part. It’s a pretty realistic and moving manga about some kids who play baseball. D’awwwws and BAWWWWWs all around.

Fullmetal Alchemist

You should know pretty damn well why I care about this.

Hayate the Combat Butler!

An impoverished, almost indestructible guy gets hired as the butler of a rich little girl. This is a comedy series that likes to transform into a harem series at times. The characters are all fun and the parodies and references come fast. Knowing that the mangaka is a student of the mangaka who did Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei explains a lot.

Kure-nai

A guy gets hired to protect the daughter of a rich, powerful family, at least in the beginning. I really liked the anime, but the abrupt ending made me seek out more. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be as updated as frequently as I’d like, but I’m up for more of Shinkuro’s and Murasaki’s adventures.

Liar Game

A naive, honest girl gets tricked into joining a game that risks bankrupting her, so she gets the aid of a con-artist with an M.A. in psychology. This is all about mindgames and psychology. In fact, the entire macguffin is to win mindgames. Of course, this means seeing the trickery that we’ve become so enamored with from Code Geass and Death Note.

Mahou Sensei Negima!

A ten year-old wizard in training is assigned to be the teacher of a class of middle school girls. It sounds pretty terrible and it starts off pretty terrible. The mangaka wanted to do a shounen battle manga, but was forced to do another harem series, since he did Love Hina. He basically tricked them by starting out like that but about 40 chapters in and 250 chapters later, we end up in a very different place with an unlikely and absurdly powerful shounen protagonist.

Mirai Nikki

God is dying so he gives twelve people a diary that reveals a selective near-future and tells them to kill each other so he can determine who gets to be God next. On the surface, we’ve got mindgames. However, a very whiny protagonist and his psychotic yandere makes this three times as entertaining than it would have been otherwise.

Saijou no Meii

This isn’t being regularly scanlated, but it is still being serialized. If it got regular updates, I’d be all over it so hard. This is essentially the shounen version of Team Medical Dragon by the mangaka who did Yakitate!! Japan. This contains the usual surgeries and hospital politics.

Soul Eater

Shinigami students collect bad souls in master-weapon partnerships. It’s not the most original series by any metric, but it does manage to be pretty cool. Don’t let the weak anime ending fool you. Much like the FMA anime, the direction that the manga takes is far more interesting. The nice thing about monthly serializations is that stuff tends to happen each chapter.

Light novel talk: Zero no Tsukaima

Posted on by
1

Since I’d heard that the Zero no Tsukaima anime started off alright but quickly did a quality nosedive, I’d avoided watching it for a while. I was pretty pleased to find a handful I volumes translated at Baka-Tsuki so I read through those, up to Volume 9.

It turns out ZnT is really a harem. I know that I probably shouldn’t be too surprised and that I probably realized this way too late. After all, every single girl was trying to get into Saito’s pants: Louise, Kirche, Siesta, Tiffania, and even Henrietta, the goddamned queen of the country. I’d probably linked Shana, which is more like shounen romance, and ZnT in my mind and expected it to be similar.

The two series do share some similarities. Both feature annoyingly prideful female leads and normal dudes who turn out to be legendary items. This leads both to have incredibly frustrating relationship development in which both main characters waffle on their feelings and get into countless misunderstandings and relationship resets. I’d kinda hoped that Louise’s and Saito’s relationship would solidify more after nine volumes, but I guess they don’t call it a reset for nothing.

Unfortunately, it turns out anything having to do with Louise or Saito are the most interesting parts of the story. His relationships with the other girls don’t really matter since they’re there just to get in the way of the main relationship. The politics between countries are boring because they’re generic fantasy nations lead by generic fantasy people. But, the issue of class and nobility is pretty interesting, because that’s the major problem for the main relationship and is the primary motivation for almost every other character.

So I guess I got through it really quickly because I just skipped all the parts that didn’t have to do with Louise or Saito. It makes me wish that Shana was getting translated instead.

Endless Eight: Endless Eight endless eight endless eight

Posted on by
Reply

Endless Eight

So, Endless Eight. I’m not sure what it is about Haruhi that makes every party involved go insane, but we’ve seen it happen to fans, the author, the publisher, and now the studio. I’m probably going to be giving Kyoto Animation the benefit of the doubt and say that they are inept and not malicious, because honestly, they’d be inept either way. From that interview about how they went about producing the arc, it sounds like they genuinely thought that they were being brilliant artistes.

There’s a theory that Kyoto Animation did it to manage expectations. That theory is dumb. All they had to do was deliver a solid and close adaptation of the light novels into anime form. This isn’t some monumentally impossible task like it is for Umineko. The theory also makes no sense. It’s like saying the next light novel volume needs to be tripe in order to make the following one more successful.

Endless Eight

The finale of Endless Eight shows us that it was possible to do the entire chapter in one episode, much like Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. I can’t believe it either, but some people liked watching seven more episodes of the SOS-dan doing mundane things. I wonder if they would have still liked it if they understood the squandered opportunities that seven episodes would have delivered:

  • Sighs
  • Where did the Cat Go? and Snow Mountain Syndrome
  • Charmed at First Sight Lover
  • The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina
  • Editor in Chief Striaght Ahead!
  • Wandering Shadow

All of these have either more interesting stuff that the SOS-dan does or contains more character development. Managing expectations? My expectation was for another season of solid side stories capped off with Disappearance. What I got was two side stories, a waste of half a season, and the lingering fear that the studio still has some trolls up its sleeve. And we haven’t even gotten to Disappearance yet.

So, Endless Eight. I’m not sure what it is about Haruhi that makes every party involved go insane, but we’ve seen it happen to fans, the author, the publisher, and now the studio. I’m probably going to be giving Kyoto Animation the benefit of the doubt and say that they are inept and not malicious, because honestly, they’d be inept either way. From that interview about how they went about producing the arc, it sounds like they genuinely thought that they were being brilliant artistes.

Endless Eight

There’s a theory that Kyoto Animation did it to manage expectations. That theory is dumb. All they had to do was deliver a solid and close adaptation of the light novels into anime form. This isn’t some monumentally impossible task like it is for Umineko. The theory also makes no sense. It’s like saying the next light novel volume needs to be tripe in order to make the following one more successful.

The finale of Endless Eight shows us that it was possible to do the entire chapter in one episode, much like Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. I can’t believe it either, but some people liked watching seven more episodes of the SOS-dan doing mundane things. I wonder if they would have still liked it if they understood the squandered opportunities that seven episodes would have delivered:

  • Sighs
  • Where did the Cat Go? and Snow Mountain Syndrome
  • Charmed at First Sight Lover
  • The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina
  • Editor in Chief Striaght Ahead!
  • Wandering Shadow

Endless Eight

All of these have either more interesting stuff that the SOS-dan does or contains more character development. Managing expectations? My expectation was for another season of solid side stories capped off with Disappearance. What I got was two side stories, a waste of half a season, and the lingering fear that the studio still has some trolls up its sleeve. And we haven’t even gotten to Disappearance yet.

Animu backlog: Honey and Clover

Posted on by
Reply

So in one fell swoop, I finished Honey and Clover and its second season, finishing a process that took over nine months.

My opinion of it wasn’t always as great as it was when I finished it. I found everything about the show to be way too slow: the pacing, the talking, the walking, etc. The only other show I put on-hold because of slowness was Casshern Sins. This is coming from someone who watched all of Aria.

To add to the problem of the slowness, I didn’t really like the cast of characters. They all bugged me in some unexplainable way. I don’t expect anyone to understand where I’m coming from, since it’s likely a product of my own crazy logic. Yeah, they managed to get me to care later on, but boy were they irritating at the beginning.

I also didn’t like the comedy relief. This usually consisted of Morita doing some crazy thing and everyone going AH MORITA-SAN WHAT ARE YOU DOING. It wasn’t particularly hilarious to me. And those jarringly sudden changes in mood were not helpful either.

Where the whole thing turned around for me to make in enjoyable was when they started to try doing something about their various problems instead of wallowing in melancholic monologues. What do you know, it’s interesting when stuff actually happens and there’s some movement.

And it’s a damn shame that Hiroshi Kamiya couldn’t voice Takemoto in the last episode, because that was weird as hell.