I know that saying the manga is better is such a cop-out, but tell me, who would you rather bang?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

(Just as a warning, this post is not only going to have spoilers for this episode, but also spoilers for the manga up until the first chapter of the second volume, which probably leads to spoilers for future episodes. So if you’re picky about this kind of stuff, sorry.)

[Another note: I know Aroduc made a post recently about how silly it is that the elevator only has a down button, but that's because Aoki and Amachi are reaching Section Nine from some sort of lobby area (the first floor), and Section Nine is stationed in the basement. They enter the elevator while still in the lobby, and there is only a down button because, most probably, the basement floors are the only floors in this building. If you look at the elevator from the shot inside, you can see that the choices are B1, B2, B3, etc. Section Nine is on B5, or Basement Level 5. Also, when Aoki and Amachi walk out of the elevator, you can see that the B5 elevator has both an up and a down button.]

Himitsu ~ The Revelation~ is based on a manga by Reiko Shimizu called Himitsu ~ Top Secret~. In this world, there’s MRI–that’s Memory Reproduction Imaging– technology that allows scientists and detectives to literally view memories in a human brain as if they were videotaped. Forensic Investigation Office Section Nine is the elite department that is responsible for this type of investigation. Senior Officer Maki is the one in charge of Section Nine. Aoki Ikkou is the new member, hired for his lip reading skills.

For the first episode, Maki, Aoki, and their colleagues at Section Nine are investigating the murder of a housewife. Her husband runs away with her brain to keep it from being violated by Section Nine’s MRI technology. They eventually solve the murder by viewing the brain (it’s the friend of the husband, an ex-boyfriend of the housewife). That’s… basically it.

In the first few minutes of the episode, Aoki is greeted in the lobby by Amachi, which freaked me out considerably and was the first sign for me that the anime is probably rearranging the story from the manga quite significantly. When Aoki and Maki are introduced in Himitsu the manga, Amachi hasn’t started work at Section Nine yet. Furthermore, the opening sequence of Himitsu the manga isn’t about Aoki and Maki at all– it’s this almost stand-alone chapter called “Top Secret 1999″.

I’m pretty sure Top Secret 1999 is going to be episode 2 of Himitsu ~The Revelation~, and that’s fine– God knows I don’t demand perfect adaptations. But the thing is Top Secret 1999 was also a story about Kevin Loomis, a lip reader in the United States, who has to deal with the murder of the president. The reason why the rearrangement is kind of sad is because the original Top Secret 1999 was not just about the president trying to protect something he meant only for himself to see, but also about Kevin Loomis and his single mother. And since Aoki doesn’t have a single mother, there’s that extra layer of emotion that’s gone, which is one of Reiko Shimizu’s specialties– emotional layers.

But that also means that I think the anime will have a more coherent story line: Himitsu episode 1 starts with a relatively light (at least compared to the actual manga cases) story before getting into Top Secret 1999, and that allows Aoki to play Kevin Loomis’ part as questioning the morality of memory snooping and thus develop his character more. Himitsu the manga throws Aoki and Maki immediately into the pit of Maki’s complicated past with a serial murder case. While engaging (and terrifying), for an anime, the pace might be too extreme…?

Look at how short Maki is compared to everyone else! Awww, Maki. He’s even shorter than Amachi in this shot.

My feeling is that they’re going to use Top Secret 1999 as a way to talk about the moral and emotional issues involved with brain viewing, then develop Amachi into more of a character before throwing down the gauntlet with her case, and maybe even use the opening story (that eventually explains who Suzuki is and why Maki is a weirdo) as the climax. (After all, anyone whose read the original ending of the first volume knows just how traumatizing and powerful it is. Plus it combines all sorts of the stories elements: Aoki’s helicopter license, Maki’s vulnerability, why watching other people’s memories are so dangerous.) That would be a really interesting rearrangement, and make for good pacing, a least. Like the ending of this episode– the speech Maki makes is straight out of Suzuki’s mouth, but unless you knew that already, it just sounds like characterization for Maki. (Episode 4 is called “Song of Happiness”, which kind of already makes me go SHIT SHIT for Amachi, even though I have no idea whatsoever whether or not it is going to be about her.)

This sequence reminded me uncomfortably of how they connected Evangelions to their pilots.

When I started writing this post, I thought I was going to complain about the animation. It’s very so-so, and like I complained earlier, the transition of Maki to the screen made him look more like a cross-dresser than a man who has the misfortune of appearing several years younger than his real age. The animation shots tend to emphasize the melodrama, but now that I’m thinking back, it’s not horrendous, and works with the series rather well (how can you not be melodramatic about memories?). Even though it was completely unnecessary, the extra detail paid to how the MRI works looks pretty damn awesome. Sure, I wish that Production I.G. or maybe even Madhouse picked it up. But beggars, choosers– hopefully the story will carry it across, and we’ll finally have more Reiko Shimizu adaptations.

(And? I am so completely and totally in love with the ending theme. Maybe I’m projecting, but it’s one of those rare moments where even if it was unintentional, the words carry a special significance for the series itself, and it’s a crazy kind of emotional catharsis to hear it while you see an image of Maki spread-eagled on a bed of roses (ah, melodrama). And. It’s just catchy.”Ikitai, ikenai, ikitai… you fade, your play…” I’ve been singing that all day.)

Stylistically, Soul Eater is at least going to be hands-down the coolest thing you will see this season. Period. It is 24 minutes of pure awesome– awesome so pure you could snort it for a high.

I bet that’s what all the girls tell you, Soul Eater. That, and that size doesn’t matter either.

Like OGT points out, Soul Eater is essentially a shounen anime with a girl lead, which is not only cool, but pretty fucking cool. The first episode focuses around Maka, a teenage (? I MEAN WHO KNOWS. DO THEY EVER MENTION HER AGE?) girl who is a Scythe Technician at the Shinigami Technical School, which is less of a school than it is a police department. Think of it like Soul Society, but with less homoerotic tension between the captains and vice-captains. Maka’s weapon is Soul Eater, who becomes a scythe. They essentially attack together; I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it seems like Soul and Maka need physical contact for Soul to become a weapon.

Any day I get Monster flashbacks from a completely unrelated anime is a day where I’ve actually accomplished something.

Soul Eater is not only made by the same studio who did Ouran, but also has the same director and two of the same seiyuus, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that just as Ouran added new humor and style to shoujo, Soul Eater is filled to the brim with hilarity and style in a way run-of-the-mill shounen series won’t. It’s really obvious from the first episode that this isn’t just another story about shinigamis and demons and collecting souls (I mean, for god’s sake, we have Bleach and D.Gray-man still going on strong for that), but a stylish and kind of kooky story about shinigamis and demons and collecting souls. Just a peek at the costumes should tell you that much: Maka is in a plaid skirt, an overcoat with exaggerated cuffs, a striped tie, and amazing boots. Blair (as in Blair Witch; I know, the first pre-Kishin soul was from “Jack the Ripper”) wears the most typical anime witch outfit, Soul looks like a character who escaped from Gorillaz, Inc., and Maka’s father Death Scythe is wearing a suit and tie outfit any kid who frequents Hot Topic would snap up in a heartbeat.

Cool.

Same with the intro, a cool CGed spin of the Shibusen that starts off serious and typical, and then gets hijacked by Shinigami-sama, who is as much of a joker as Tamaki ever was (think the Millennium Earl on a diet…?). Then we go serious again with Maka beating the shit out of Jack the RIpper in an action sequence that gives Blassreiter a run for its money (and not in CG either!) before transitioning slickly into a comedy bit with Maka, Soul, and Shinigami-sama debriefing while Death Scythe demands Soul feel up his daughter so that he can… not… feel up his daughter…. And while Soul is running after women with big boobs and interrupting women naked in bubble baths, Maka shows off her emotional vulnerability, and we fade in and out of typical shounen moments like “THE POWER! THE SURGE OF POWER!” and anti-climatic humor like “I’m just a kitty with strong magic….”

Soul Eater Explains It All (Except for Lolicons).

You know what I think is one of the coolest things about Soul Eater right now? The music is spot on. The opening music is typical doomsday shounen foreshadowing, the OP song is energetic, and then suddenly at 09:00 there’s an eyecatch set to something that sounds like the opening to an m-flo loves Hirai Ken song…! Where the fuck did that come from! So amazing. And then when Soul Eater lands on Blair’s breasts, there’s blaxploitation music, and a nice soft shoujo-esque bit for Maka’s emotional outburst, and then something that could totally be a punk rock hit is overlaid for the next episode preview.

On a semi-related side note, I laughed a lot when Maka started revealing she had daddy issues. To be honest, that was one my favorite pseudo-psychoanalyzing points about Haruhi in Ouran, the whole Tamaki/Ryoji/”Otou-san” issues throughout the story. Like how Maka’s family situation is brought up during a scene while Death Scythe is at a cabaret club, and Soul is the one man Maka has trusted because of his father’s flirting. In a lot of ways, I think anime/manga (or it might be Japan in general) seem to explore father/daughter relationships with, if not more candidness, then more frequency than Western literature. Maybe it is the fascination with youth, or just a fascination with idealized girls in general, or because Japan values filial relationships, but it’s nice to see them portrayed, well or badly.

The added level of this being said by a semi-phallic object is not lost on me.

(Single parents are popular in fiction in general, of course, and I’m sure everyone and his dog knows how Disney has so rarely had two-parent families. But talking about this just reminds me of a great, great manga called Baby Pop, by Yayoi Ogawa, the same mangaka that wrote Kimi wa Petto/ Tramps Like Us. It’s about a young woman who has to live with her mother’s new husband after her mother dies in a car accident. I think there are scans of it floating around somewhere, but I highly recommend you read it if you ever come across it.)

Soul Eater is the first shounen anime in a long time that I’m going to watch without any prior knowledge of the source material. I’m also told it’s going to be 51 episodes. …!! On one hand, 51 episodes of BONES being awesome would be, well, awesome, but it’s also a long, long time. Not to stretch the Bleach references too thin or anything, but I hope this won’t end up like how in the beginning Rukia was a badass motherfucker who could rip Ichigo a new one and by the current run of the series, Kubo Tite just descends into pseudo-”Women in Refrigerators Syndrome”. Goddamnit, Japan. And you’d been hiding your well-meant sexism so well, too.

How do you say no to something this cute? Oh wait. You don’t. See you next episode.

This… is so uncomfortably true. Well, maybe minus the sports references, because it’s been a full year since I’ve watched a complete game of basketball. (And yes, I fully appreciate the irony of the first anime blog link on two if by sea to be a link to Jason Miao.) I know I find myself latching on to a show, enjoying the shit out of it, and then writing long commentaries that only delineate the flaws in it.

Conversely, though, with shows that I find not salvageable, I feel the need to find something meaningful or enjoyable about it…? And these days, I don’t know if it’s because I always see the glass as half full, or because I want validation that I’m not just wasting my time.

(Today, though, a friend of mine, who normally expresses disdain over my clandestine nerdy hobbies, demanded to know whether I ever feel like I wasted my time after watching a particularly bad anime. “No? Even if it’s bad, I laugh at it to myself…?” I thought this was going to be a serious conversation, but then he revealed he’d seen anime before. “!!!,” I said. “WHICH ONE?” “…Kimi ga Nozomu Eien.” really, wtf? orz)

Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, as much as I enjoy all the anime bloggers who sound like they have film theory majors (and really, I do, I don’t know how I could have conceptualized sexuality and textuality if it weren’t for Daniel), I still wonder: why aren’t there more bloggers with distinctive half-mocking half-loving voices? I mean, there are the lovable (? I mean sometimes. Other times– grating like Ayu and Parmesan cheese– oh that was a mixed metaphor, shit) trolls like lolikitsune, and Kurogane cracks funnies all the time, but it depresses me that I go to Derailed by Darry just so I can smile while lambasting Gundam 00.

I wish I could be objective about anime shows, but unfortunately, I’m about as biased as they come. It’s not so much that I see a show about loli schoolgirls or Key adaptations or harems and then refuse to watch the show; it’s kind of more like the opposite. I’ll watch a lot of things rather idly, but when it comes to the things that I really like, my buttons are pressed like whoa and it’s hard for me to see through the haze. I’m not really even sure what exactly these red flags are– it can be something really stupid, like how my impressions of Night Wizard are completely colored by the fact that the last episode found my button for fake memories and sacrifice and pounded on it.

Which is why when I tell you guys that Kurenai is the most amazing show ever, take it with a grain of salt. Everything about Kurenai, from the voice acting to the dialogue to the music, attacks my most basic loves in anime.

(Sorry, guys. My screencapping technology failed me for this episode. You’ll have to forgive my lack of pictures.)

Kurenai’s basic setup: There’s this family called the Kuhouins. The current head was in love with this woman named Souju, but was forced by his family to be with another woman, Kazuko. Souju had a daughter with the Kuhouin head named Murasaki. One day, Murasaki’s servant allows a mysterious woman named Benika to take Murasaki away from the Kuhouin mansion. Meanwhile, a boy named Shinkurou works for Benika as a mediator for small things, like debt collection. Shinkurou lives by himself in a studio and is ridiculously poor. Benika entrusts Shinkurou to act as Murasaki’s guardian/bodyguard.

There’s so much to talk about with Kurenai. Like, how the opening and ending sequences are almost complete 180s of the actual show– the opening sequence is a bright, flash-inspired bit that looks like something that escaped from Harajuku. The ending sequence is almost Red Garden or Gankutsuou in its patterns and colors. But the actual show is in these subdued, ordinary hues with the occasional splotch of color for Murasaki’s clothes.

Or the dialogue in this show, which is not exactly slice-of-life, but somewhere between that and a rapid fire witty back-and-forth that you usually see in, say, a Sorkin drama. Especially around 13:45, the back and forth between Shinkurou and Benika adds to the tension and development of the show, but in a playful way, as if mocking the fact that Shinkurou’s neighbor and landlady are outside eavesdropping. It happens again when Murasaki is drilling Shinkurou about his apartment. The whole scene highlights the extreme difference between Murasaki, a rich sheltered girl, and Shinkurou, an orphan(?) who has had to support himself, but there’s also a note of hilarity because in a way, the emptiness of Shinkurou’s apartment is kind of funny, if you ignore the fact that it reveals just how bare-bones his entire life is.

Or how about the fact that the entire first episode is almost harem-esque in its development? Shinkurou has a childhood friend Murakami, a classmate named Yuuno who definitely is attracted to him, Benika from who Shinkurou desperately wants acceptance and respect, a landlady who likes to tease him, a neighbor who is two inches away from sexually harassing Shinkurou, and then Murasaki, a little girl that Shinkurou is playing the white knight to. And that brings me to the fact that kurenai’s greatest accomplishment right now is defining personalities in seconds. Though the women other than Benika and Murasaki have less then ten minutes combined of screen time, it feels shockingly as if you already know them. They all add a bit to the overall atmosphere of the show, which is accentuated by the jazzy music that highlights Shinkurou’s life and the simple, traditional music that follows Murasaki.

But you know what? Really what drew me to this show is the voice acting. Around 08:00, when Shinkurou chats with Murakami, and then Yuuno interrupts, the voice acting is so incredibly smooth and full of tiny subtleties. Yuuno is light and flirtatious, and Murakami is friendly and teasing, but in an entirely different way when she laughs. Shinkurou plays the smug card and the oblivious, somewhat uncomfortable card extraordinarily well, and oh, listen to that bit where Yuuno tells him the time and Shinkurou says, “oh, that’s right.” It sounds so real, so convincing, like the actor themself just realized the time.

Mmmm, personal anime buttons.

More like ASSREITER AMIRITE lol.

ahhhh, racing teams. Where your ability to have buttsex determines your worth.

…Too easy?

Thanks, Mr. Obvious.

Blassreiter is Gonzo’s attempt to show off its CG department and also its fling with making a post-Eva pseudo-zombie movie that got out of hand, which serves to remind me of Gasaraki (and hey, that’s not a bad thing, I really enjoyed Gasaraki). Here’s the basic setup: Blassreiter is set in… Germany? or at least, some European country that could help explain the names Igor, Gerd, and Hermann. Recently, dead people have started coming “alive” again the form of robot-like beings called Demoniacs that literally assimilate things around them, like scalpels or bombs or in some cases, motorcycles. Apparently, even though multiple gunshot wound won’t kill them, these lightsaber-like emissions from the palms of other Demoniacs will.

zombie humanoid raep time!

Gerd is a former motorcyclists who, in a Demoniac-related accident, is paralyzed from the waist down. However, he’s approached by a scientist who offers him a pill. The pill? makes him a Demoniac, so that he can fight other Demoniacs.

The best thing about Blassreiter are the Demoniac sequences. The first one is done in an odd color sequence with a beating heart as its background soundtrack. The Demoniacs are like more human Eva units on a smaller scale, and they’re scary as shit. The opening few minutes with the naked woman waking up as Demoniac and blowing the brains of the guys in the car is unbelievably creepy and pretty damn cool, all things considered. The action sequences with the Demoniacs are surprising and worthy of Hollywood summer blockbusters, and they make up for the fact that the rest of the show… is also worthy of Hollywood summer blockbusters, by which I mean the acting is wooden and the story is forced.

Would you trust a woman who couldn’t dye her roots? Me neither.

Let’s take that bit where Gerd is offered a pill by the scientist. First of all, the scientist is dressed in a flowery black and white gown under a lab jacket. She has well manicured nails, ridiculous ko-gal makeup, and has yellow hair that becomes green. She offers him a pill, telling him that a) it’s not yet done with clinical human trials, b) it could give him hallucinations and brain damage and c) it could kill him. Keep in mind that Gerd has never met this lady, and the lady stalked him to the race tracks. If you were Gerd, what would you do?

What is the Japanese equivalent of the FDA anyway? And how would you explain this drug to them? “Well, it makes you into a strange, robot-like thing that fights zombies… There’s a big market for it, trust me.”

I know that asking for common sense in sci-fi anime series is like asking for 90s anime to have less fanservice, but you’d think there would be a less insane way of getting Gerd to take the road to becoming a Demoniac.

Gerd has the sharpest eyebrows on this side of Gundam Wing.

Or how about Gerd and Hermann’s relationship? Or Gerd being fired from his race team? Or Gerd’s former teammate Igor, calling him an eyesore? Or Jill dumping Gerd the day he gets out of the hospital? Or how human corpses can become completely metal without assimilating a whole tank first? The dramatic after-battle cigarette lighting? No individual part of Blassreiter is over the top, but that all together, the show is ridiculous. It isn’t helped that anything in the show that could be CGed is CGed. That’s a close-up of a person handling a gun, random cars, someone holding a clipboard, background images of boxes, smoke seen from a distance, you name it, it’s probably in CG. Don’t get me wrong, the CG looks pretty damn cool with the Demoniacs, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it gets ridiculously tiresome.

So far, though, the show is much better than I was ready to give it credit for. Hermann and his partner Amanda have pleasing, if noncommittal character designs, but I really like their interaction. The music is appropriately dramatic, and the pop-song addict in me adores the relaxing quality of the ED song. The action scenes are well planned and furiously dynamic. And hell, admit it– you want to know why Hermann and Amanda’s operation is stationed out of a church. Japan must have such a weird idea of what Europe is like.

One of my debate teammates found me in the hotel room watching Bus Gamer and was like, “Oh my god, you don’t really watch anime, do you?” and I was like, “Yeah, dude, I totally do,” and he was like “How stereotypical of you!” and I was like, “LOOK MAN, I DON’T DO IT BECAUSE I WANT TO BE STEREOTYPICAL, OKAY.” Which is when I told him that for the most part I didn’t watch too many girly animes, except I didn’t mention my fondness for bl, and he was like, well, what do you watch, big-breasted anime? And I wanted to be like “God, no, I watch shit where guys have out of body experiences or are more in love with planes than human beings and then sometimes I trust Jason Miao and watch a whole series about succubi,” but then I opened the first episode of Itazura na Kiss. And despaired.

…is it bad that Minami-ke has me thinking, “That’s a trap!”

Basic plot: Kotoko really likes Irie. Irie is the top of his class so smart so beautiful blah blah blah. Kotoko is in the lowest class. She confesses to him. He says, “I hate stupid girls.” Then Kotoko’s house falls down in an earthquake and her dad’s friend invites them to stay at his house. It turns out… it’s Irie’s house. WOW. I WOULD HAVE NEVER EXPECTED THAT.

I can’t really stand typical shoujo anime. I mean, it’s quite a feat that I even stayed with Love Complex as long as I did to actually like it, and Itazura na Kiss doesn’t even have the kansaiben or cute quibbling back and forth that RabuCon did in the first episode. Itazura na Kiss starts with everything I hate about typical shoujo anime: the girl is far worse in school and almost hopeless and pines helplessly after the guy, the guy is heartless and handsome and rejects her horribly, and then by a ridiculous act of fate they are thrown together. In this case, termites…?

That’s what they all say. And then before you know it, MALE PREGNANCY.

It’s not that I think stupid people don’t exist, or that I think all shoujo heroines have to be intelligent. It’s fine! There are going to be people that aren’t as smart as others, and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have romantic relationships or awkward first dates with them, but isn’t that how you determine racism/sexism/etc in entertainment? Why are there so many shoujo scenarios were the girl is just that much less intelligent than the guy? It would be okay if Kotoko were just a few steps behind Irie, but why is it that even after she tries to her hardest, she is still in the lowest class and unable to read kanji taught in elementary class? Why isn’t there ever an anime where a girl falls in love with a guy who is in a lower class than her? blah blah blah Japan blah blah blah cultural relativity whatever.

There’s a word for that, girls, and it saddens me to say that it makes Irie very, very different.

Itazura na Kiss straddles that awkward line for me, where I want to hate Irie for being haughty and mean (“I hate stupid girls”– do people even say things like that? I mean, if I were Irie, and I didn’t want to bother, I’d just say, “No, seriously, not interested,” unless he actually had a vendetta against stupid people) and I want to hate Kotoko even though it’s not her fault that the mangaka is following shoujo tropes. Everything looks like it’s summing up to me not enjoying this show. I don’t like any of the characters except for Kinnosuke, and that’s only because it makes me think this show followed Kusatta Kyoushi no Houteishiki’s formula. I don’t like the art, because I’m elitest and I did not enjoy 90s animation (look, would you rather have Sunrise do another episode of Gundam Wing, or have the rookie P.A. Works do it? Yeah, I thought so). And there’s nothing redeeming about the music, the voice actors, or the. Well. What else is left?

I remember being really disappointed when I read the comic for the first time and found out there weren’t any buses in this series. Not even, you know, a minibus, or a school bus, or even a bus for public transit somewhere. It’s really quite unfair. It’s like how Code Geass promised us codes and geass (OR GAYASS AMIRITE) but instead just gave us girls masturbating against tables and obscene metaphors using pizza.

The thing is, even with context, this capture is still the same– absurd. Also, I like how this is an anime about violence and fighting and pseudo-gay and my lead-in picture is of tea….

You see, the series should really be called “Biz Gamer”, because the “bus” is meant to be short for “business”, but because Japan doesn’t understand that American English was basically a whore in a dark alley stealing words from everyone else, Minekura came up with “Bus” instead, thus confusing thousands of fans watching the show waiting for someone to rape someone else on a vehicle of public transport.

The thing with Minekura’s stories is that they always occupy this special world of hers, and this world is always the same, whether it’s ancient China or modern Japan. It’s made of equal parts too cool for words, too dangerous for ordinary people, and so full of subtleties and things you can’t talk about that every subplot is really just a chance for exposition. Oh, and those very close male friendships that are just on the edge of eh~~. It’s like she has her own mythic archetypes. There’s the naive young man, the gun-totin’ hard smokin’ “icebox where my heart is” counterpart, there’s a womanizer who never lets you in close (emotional issues, mothers, usually), there’s the inscrutable friendly but scary motherfucker, there’s the sardonic older man (who, oddly enough, is usually pretty hot in Minekura world). Sometimes they’re all different people and sometimes they’re all separate people but it’s always good and it works together, you know, but then sometimes you’re stuck with only 11 chapters of Bus Gamer and the Tokyopop versions of Wild Adapter (yeah I’m bitter. So bite me).

But the other thing is that I don’t think it translates well to anime at all. I’m not saying that Minekura can never be animated, just that so far, Saiyuki, Exec. Committee, and now Bus Gamer all have failed me.

It must have been some bad yakisoba, man, because you have no eyes. (actually, that’s Saitou talking in the background while Nakajou smokes in the foreground)

The problem with Bus Gamer is that so much of it depends on the characters. The situation, plot, or world just aren’t that interesting in and of themselves. Here’s the Biz Game: there’s this underground game that big companies play. Each company has a team of three. Each round, two teams are paired together. One is Home– they have a disc filled with important, potentially damaging information about their company. The other team is Away and tries to steal the disc. Biz Game is essentially a street fight. The two teams duke it out, one company loses, the other company wins, fin.

Just writing that out made me bored and this is my problem. I was so bored with this episode that I literally fell asleep during it and missed the entire end fight scene because I was too busy not drooling on my keyboard. I felt like I was watching an animated AU fanfic of Gundam Wing with a more irritable Trowa, a gaki!Quatre, and a Duo in his twenties. “That’s because it’s a three person brat pack,” you’re saying. No, it’s because the adaptation is bad and clumsy. The original Bus Gamer had this half-noir, half-action flick appeal, because the characters were amazingly cool and streamlined Minekura types but you weren’t allowed to know anything about them because that’s one of the rules the team makes for itself: don’t ask questions about each other. So half the fun was about finding out who the hell these three guys were and why they hell you wanted to sleep with them. But the anime reduces them to caricatures, half-hearted copies who inspire disdain rather than interest, and this is why there are some stories that will just be good only if they have a top tier anime studio animate it.

Just take Toki– in the original story, Minekura writes him in a slightly effeminate, typical bishounen body with just that slight edge of savagery and violence. But in the anime, he’s just a hot-headed unfriendly dude with ugly hair. Or Nakajou– in Minekura’s manga world, he’s a charming playboy with a nihilistic edge. In the anime, he’s reduced to one scene with a faceless woman in an unattractive tanktop. And then there are more basic questions, like why do Toki and Nakajou just hate each other when they meet each other? Why should we give a damn about their pasts? If Toki was from a family of martial arts how did he end up spoiler spoiler spoiler with his spoiler spoiler spoiler? And why is his hair red? And why, at a younger age, did he look like Honey’s brother? And can someone just kill all the crows?

But the guy who suffers the most is this guy, Saitou. It’s not that he differs from his manga incarnation, it’s that Bus Gamer the manga had eleven chapters for Minekura to tinker around and Bus Gamer the anime has two more episodes before it’s over. And Saitou doesn’t get interesting until much later on in the story, when you find out that he’s a pretty smart guy with a computer~. But since the first fight is probably going to take up half of the next episode, well, that means we probably will get 15 minutes of the last episode to justify Saitou’s existence, and no beer garden shenanigans. As it is right now, he’s unbelievably useless and makes me want to choke him, which is sad, because I actually kind of like Saitou.

Maybe that’s not the show’s fault, though. I mean, manga!Minekura is a hard act to follow. And they did get Junichi Suwabe to voice Nakajou. Beggars, choosers, etc.

our trio at a ramen shop. notice the wonderful team interaction– they are all sitting at separate tables…

Spring 2008 has already started, and I still don’t know if I should try to follow 24 shows or just give up all pretense and only watch the anal sex ones.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. But I do have a .txt file on my desktop labeled “spring 2008″, and it does have 24 shows listed, like I actually believe I’m going to have the time or the energy to watch all of them, considering I still haven’t finished watching Dragonaut, KimiKiss, or even Red Garden.

Buttsechs

Bus Gamer: Minekura does her thing with almost bl scenarios and crappy animation quality. Sometimes I wonder why we can’t have a studio like KyoAni adapt a pseudo-yaoi series. But then I remember the fanbase, and sigh. (I already have the first episode on my computer. It already looks sad and disappointing.)

Junjou Romantica: I don’t know why the idea of this being adopted into an anime makes me laugh as much as it does. I mean, on one hand, you have great stories like 20th Century Boys or Here is Greenwood or even Zetsuai/Bronze who don’t have proper adaptations, and on the other hand Junjou Romantica gets 24 episodes. I wonder if that’s going to be, say, 14 episodes of Romantica proper and 10 episodes of Egoist. One can only hope. (Are you kidding me? I think I have to watch this. I hear they’re downplaying the yaoi for humor– so I guess that means sexing only every other episode instead of every episode…)

Monochrome Factor: According to AnimeNfo, this show is just the most generic sci-fi bl series known to man. Main character meets a beautiful man dressed in black, beautiful man dressed in black takes him to an unknown world, buttsex ensues. Or something like that. The character designs are decent, but the animation is crappy, the mysterious man in black wears warm pink lipstick, and the monsters are literally black silhouettes. Saving grace– Is that Ryu Sasakura doing a cameo?? (Will probably watch the first episode in hopes of it really being Ryu Sasakura.)

Himitsu: I wonder if putting this series in this category is technically wrong. I mean, it’s implied in the original manga and it was written by a mangaka who liked to toe the line. If it’s even half as interesting as the original manga was, though, I’ll probably watch every minute of it and then have nightmares for months.

Land of CRACK

Chi’s Sweet Home: 3 minute shorts about a lost kitten. I wonder what poor seiyuu was cast for Chi’s voice and how that audition went. “You there, you sound the most like a confused animal wailing because it’s getting washed. You’re hired.” (Already watching this. Oh god what does this say about my sanity level.)

Wagaya no Oinarai-sama: It’s like Spice & Wolf, except with genderbending. Look, I don’t know, I just want to know why Japan is obsessed with wolf people, okay. (No. I mean, maybe, but take it as a no.)

Kaiba: The art is so weird. It’s about memory and planets and KATAMARI DAMACY MEETS OSAMU TEZUKA? (I watched Osamu’s sex ed series on crunchyroll for Japanese practice…)

Toshokan Sensou: Most countries like China just put people under house arrest as part of their public relations on freedom of the press and censorship and what not. Japan, on the other hand, makes an anime about it. From AniDB: “In the year 2019, the explosion of information and misinformation became a direct threat to society. In a daring decision, it was decided to create a new government agency dedicated solely to information management. Now some thirty years later, the government still monitors and controls information, suppressing anything they find undesirable, but standing against their abuses of power are the libraries, with their special agents called ‘the book soldiers.’” So it’s going to be like… Fahrenheit 451 meets R.O.D. amirite. (idk.)

Blassreiter: I think this is like a zombie movie crossed with Heroic Age. It has the best trailer music of this bunch, though. Also, maybe some bike racing…?? (Yes, if just for the OP.)

Because Kaiji is Over

Kure-nai: Some dude who usually handles negotiations becomes a long-term babysitter. It sounds like Hayate no Gotoku, except without the jokes, or Darker then Black, but with Aishiteruze Baby. That last sentence means nothing– it’s like saying, “It’s like Akagi, but without the mahjong,” or “It’s like Kanon, but without the sad girls,” or “It’s like Naruto, but without the ninjas– oh wait, that’s Bleach…” (It depends on how bratty the girl is. I hate brats in anime, unless they’re romantic counterparts, and then I either stop watching the series or tolerate them. I hope that doesn’t happen in Kure-nai, though, or else we have a whole ‘nother problem coming up.)

Tower of Druaga: I watched Night Wizard last season; I suppose I could watch another game adaptation. Pro: Paku Romi is in it. Con: there’s a character who looks just like Sasuke.I’m waiting for the day Gonzo makes a WoW anime and then fansubs that one too.

Amatsuki: The art in the manga is infamous, but the animation is so bland. And it sounds like Monochrome Fac– actually, wait. It just sounds like every supernatural shounen show ever made. (We’ll see.)

Itazura na Kiss: The manga starts with a house falling down and ended with the mangaka’s house falling down on her. I know I shouldn’t find that funny, but god help me, I do. It looks terrible, but the irony keeps me interested.

Nabari no Ou: Like Naruto, but with a better soundtrack and animation team. OUCH yeah i said it. (There’s a good chance I’ll probably be watching this.)

Special A: Ouran’s trailer trash sister. Does that work without BONES animating it? (I guess we’ll find out.)

Neo Angelique Abyss: Like Saint Beast, but not bl. I think.

Vampire Knight: Typical shoujo love triangle, but with vampires. The trailer gives me Utena flashbacks (which would be a good or a bad thing), but I remember being not enthused when I was reading the manga. Mostly because whenever I think of vampires I think of Anne Rice, and there certainly weren’t any violin players, whores, or rock stars in this. (Yes, just so I can hate shoujo all over again.)

RD Sennou Chousashitsu: Think Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Crappiest trailer ever made, generic character designs, but amazing 3D effects, reminding us all that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. (Probably not. Why is this still on my list? Oh yeah, because I watched shows like Yukikaze for the fight scenes.)

Crystal Blaze: Everyone’s calling Cowboy Bebop on this, but somehow I get Jiraishin flashbacks instead…? I can’t stand the visuals, but I may end up watching this because I’m a sheep for the detective genre. What a crappy title.

Golgo13: Speaking of Jiraishin, here’s the 148 volume relative. (I can’t stand GAR for the sake of GAR, but the character designs remind me of Akagi and Kaiji.)

Nijuu Mensou no Musume: Thieves and Roger Smith. a;sdfj I dunno, I’m not a guy, Chiko doesn’t turn me on. Why can’t they make an animated version of From Eroic With Love yet.

Are You Kidding, Of Course I’m Watching This

Code Geass S2: No words are necessary. I think of it like Gundam 00’s hotter, bisexual stepsister. And also, Lulu has a brother named… (wait for it)… LOLO.

Petite Eva: I hear it is going to be subbed. This means everyone needs to watch Shinji eating batteries to not piss off Unit 01.

Soul Eater: D.Gray-man meets Bleach meets Zombie Loan meets Hot Topic anime style but with twice the cool because BONES is animating it.

Every once in a while I realize that it’s not that I don’t want a new season of anime, I just wish they would remix the last one. With that in mind…

Top Ten Crossovers/Patisches I Would Die For

10. Hayate no Gotoku & Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei & Yakitate!!Japan

A show about butlers. A show about bread. A show about a teacher.

Just imagine the jokes. The nice thing about these three shows is that Yakitate!!Japan and Hayate would keep Zetsubou from going too crazy, Zetsubou would keep the other two from becoming too laid back, Hayate has the right amount of moe, and Yakitate!!Japan is the only one of them that has an over-reaching plot. How’s this– Pantasia is bought by Sanzen’ins, and meanwhile Hayate part-times there to make up for his debt money. It happens to be in the same neighborhood as the Zetsubou crowd. Cue antics. Or: they all go to Nagi’s academy. Or: they all go to Nozomi’s academy. Or better yet, they just make it a 2 hour OVA special where they parody .hack//sign, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, and Welcome to the NHK.

A childish ward capable of great power, if he could only unlock it and control it. A testy short-tempered guardian with a gun. A sinister plot that is partially revealed through time shifts. Violence, complicated backstories, but ultimately stories about what you’re destined to do, how you’re destined to get there.

I think, oddly enough, the most entertaining thing about this crossover would be the underlying tragedy that follows both of these series. Saiyuki is about a group of people who’ve been marginalized by society, who have one of the most dangerous jobs of saving the world, but are rarely, if ever, appreciated, and in essence, every member of the four person group has only the three others to go to for comfort.

If you think too hard about it, Reborn! is a story about people who are trying to change what they already know is inevitable. 10 years from now, they are going to be in mortal danger, Tsuna will be probably dead, the Vongola family’s guardians are getting picked off, and the crazy thing is how do we even know that the kids fixing the 10YL situation will help? It’s the ultimate time paradox.

The cool thing is when they mix, it’s throwing the two groups in sharp relief. Saiyuki is about an extremely tightly-knit community of four. Reborn! is about an ever expanding cast of allies and an ever weaving web of enemies. Saiyuki is about being fallen deities, reborn and trying again. Reborn! is about starting from nothing and trying hard to match up to expectations. I have no idea how this crossover would work, what plot it would be, but it’s just like I know it would be amazing.

Meanwhile, though, Goku and Tsuna would be hilarious together. I’m sure Sanzo and Reborn have a lot to talk about. Hakkai could jam with any of them, and Gojyo wouldn’t say no to Bianchi. Not to mention, also both series where numbers are recognized as code…!

Think of Ryoma playing go and Nanjirou coming back to haunt him just like Sai. I guess that kind of reflects on what I think of these two series; there’s an interesting parallel in Sai and Hikaru / Nanjirou and Ryoma, Hikaru and Akira / Ryoma and Tezuka, which is almost too nicely neat. It’s also really the only way it could work. I don’t really see a possibility of Sai as a tennis ghost… but anyway, I think there’s also something in both of these series that these sports and games can only be played for personal gain. There is no way to sacrifice yourself for the sport for someone else. But at the same time, both series do really great “kids around time” normal moments that hide just how demented the obsession for the sport really is, and that’s why they’d go so well together. Just imagine Hikaru no Go and Prince of Go, though– Ryoma and Hikaru as unlikely buddies, Waya and Momo playing MMORPG games together, Kishimoto and Tezuka bonding silently over black coffee and Japanese literature, Fuji trying to steer Akira the wrong way, and Inui becoming more and more frustrated as he tries to beat Ochi. Nanjirou and Touya Koyo chattering about their sons during Meijin rounds. Akutsu and Mitani getting up to no good. Kaga roping Taka into shougi. Oishi and Tsutsui swapping biology notes. Instant win in my book.

They were both such great side-by-sides, I couldn’t pick one.

All right, I own up– it’s because D.Gray-man is 19th century England and Tactics is Taishou Japan. But I just see there being exorcisms that are impossible for Kantarou because they’re actually Akuma. Or Kantarou having some fragment of Innocence in him in an odd way. And Kantarou and Allen Walker having deep conversations. And Cross Marian and Komui intruding into the Tactics world just makes me laugh for no good reason. Both series have this underlying “let’s fuck up the children!!” strain that isn’t at all belied by its carefree and happy protagonist, both of whom, I think, contain depths and levels that only come out when they’re being threatened with the emotional wreckage of the people closest to them. And there’s that great visual level. It totally works: lush Japanese spirituality, black and white English sci-fi fantasy.

Did anyone notice that for a school that was supposedly all male, Osaka High gets into plenty of scrapes that requires male!Mizuki to cross-dress? And that all the series have that typical brat-pack feel with a twist? And that all of them have jokes about foreigners and stereotypes of Japan? And that there’s implied/subtextual homosexuality in all of them? So JUST THINK: Osaka, Ryokuto, and Ouran all have a cultural festival together! Shinobu and Kyouya meet and greet and do it all mannerpunk style while Shino and Mori have a high jump competition! Mitsuru and Tamaki become bosom buddies! Shun and Haruhi bond and Mizuki blushes awkwardly (and later confides in Haruhi)! Taiki gives advice to the Black Magic club! Everyone is a host for a day! I’d dig it.

05. Gundam Wing & Legend of Galactic Heroes

If Treize is to Reinhard, then Zechs is to Siegfried as Lady Une is to Hildegard and Annerose. There is no comparable analysis for the Alliance, unfortunately, but all the same, LoGH would give GW the systematic, epic background necessary, and GW would give LoGH some wild, Sunrise-brand drama just to stir things up. Oh, and some really, really young kids. The cast of GW is a crazy hodgepodge of civilians, terrorists, and military personnel, whereas LoGH is mostly military, and I think that’s one of the major differences between the two and why they would benefit so well from meeting. Plus, okay, all of you really want to see Reinhard and Treize sharing a rose petal bath. while Zechs and Siegfried play chess right next to the tub and Lady Une and Annerose have tea.

Count D sells something to a customer. It fucks up, like it always does. Leon is asked to investigate, but it’s out of his depth, so he calls in a specialist– Cain. Or Cain investigates a phenomenon of people getting what they desire, only to royally fuck it up. He encounters Leon, who is trying to follow the same scent trail. It leads them to Count D, who would of course have links to Delilah. You can mix and match however you want, but imagine the creepy tragic nature of Petshop combined with Kaori Yuki’s flamboyant gothic lolita style that always seems to be a little too real for your own comfort.

Fire Candy is Air Gear if it were written by a hentai mangaka. Air Gear is Fire Candy written by a mangaka with shounen sensibilities. A sport equivalent to rollerblading, a heterosexual romance on the forefront, multiple homosexual implications in the background, and sex, sex, sex. Air Gear could bring in more of that sport and competition that is needed for a long series. Fire Candy could bring in the social commentary and dark, dark implications of the future presented. Air Gear brings optimism. Fire Candy brings tragedy. Air Gear brings strong women characters (even if it is Ougure). Fire Candy brings complexity in characterization to a degree that is almost painful. And everyone could have lots of sex, this time, censored with crows.

A thief and his eternal rival. The free and imaginative versus calculation and self-control. Comedic romps interspliced with theft, stylized violence, bizarre happenings. And oh, the UST. The funny thing about these two series, though, is that while From Eroica With Love was written for an older audience and stars older characters in a more serious time, almost nothing about the book is serious. On the other hand, while D.N. Angel was written for a younger audience with younger characters, it frequently goes into the very, very serious and very, very dramatic angst. I think it’d be interesting to either a) see the DN Angel characters all grown up in another century, or b) see Eroica in a modern light. And let’s face it– if DN Angel were written by someone who had nostalgia for the tanbi tradition, Satoshi and Daisuke would be screwing by now.

This would be so epic and so amazing that it would break everyone’s mind to the point of no return and no one would ever be able to make another anime about cross-dressing, aliens, or host clubs. The greatest thing about these three series is that they all have a central leader character who inspires comedic chaos– Haruhi, Kana, and Tamaki. You know they would love to hang out and swap ideas. They all have a boke who is sarcastic and control the craziness– Kyon, Chiaki, and Haruhi. There’s an element of ridiculousness but AWESOMENESS, they’re all series that took a genre and screwed with it, they’re all adaptations of a less inventive and less odd source material, and shockingly, they all involve cross-dressing…?! Even though for Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, it’s just a fan thing. I can’t even bring up plot ideas for this one, it’s just that epic. But I know if they all came together, the awesomeness would just kill elitist anime fans everywhere.

This is a generic introduction that has nothing to do with aliens, time travelers, or ESPers. In fact, it really has nothing to do with anything at all. Especially not what the hell this blog is doing here.