In addition to Nyan Koi!, we’ll also take a look at a show I haven’t seen before in Thriller Restaurant, revisit 11Eyes, see if the plot in The Sacred Blacksmith finally goes anywhere and finally, if we have time, maybe even peek at Kampfer again.

Nyan Koi! 06

Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.

…the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of God… And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained.

…having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony.

And at length I… speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation.

And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.”

And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable fell duskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed lolis.

-THE END-

Thriller Restaurant 01 & 02

Do you guys remember watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon on Saturday nights? Man, I used to think those stories would be super creepy and I’d always hype it up to my cousins all the time. “Trust me guys, it’s actually gonna be scary this week.” Sadly, we got some lame stories every Saturday night. That’s how Thriller Restaurant feels. If I was eight again, I’d go through the same thing with Thriller Restaurant.

Thriller Restaurant’s palette is all out of whack. Does it have to be so bright? Ghost Hunt got the colors right, but then again, with Rie Kugimiya’s shrill voice, could anyone really be scared?

The stories in Thriller Restaurant aren’t egregiously bad and neither are the characters, but that doesn’t mean anything’s good either. Actually, it’s all quite bland. Since this is obviously a kid’s show, let’s bring something else up. I personally doubt horror would ever really translate effectively to anime.

How can you ever be in the mood to be scared when you have honking anime eyes staring at you? In all seriousness, however, horror to me is about the suspension of belief. It’s hard enough to do that with a live action movie like Ringu, but then you’ve got valiant attempts in Paranormal Activity to seem as real as possible and they still don’t do anything for me. How can anime, therefore, stand a chance? Has there ever been anime that was scary? I haven’t seen one.

On a tangent, could you imagine how fast food corn would go down in America?

11Eyes 05 & 06

If you wanted to see panties, it just seems easier to watch Sora no Otoshimono’s ED over and over. Otherwise, I really don’t see anything of value in this show.

The protagonist is in the obligatory training stage. He’s like super amateurish but also full of boundless potential or something. Yeah, great stuff. Too bad he just fights like a giant fairy.

He gets super injured and the only prescription apparently is to get nekkid. Didn’t you have to have sex in Fate/Stay Night? Only in eroge. Since this show’s so useless, let’s at least turn this into something educational.

I always wondered why members of Japanese biker gangs (bosozoku) wore those bandages around their torsos. I initially thoughts girls might do it to tape down their chests for practicality, but then guys do the same thing. Plus, there’s no way in hell the school nurse can manage to tape anything down. It’s Google time and I found two sources. First, Wiki has to say:

They will also often wrap a tasuki, which is a sash tied in X around the torso, a look inspired by Japanese World War II fighter pilots.

More interesting, however:

In Japan there’s a traditional road race — a 2-day 134-mile 10-person relay called the Hakone Ekiden — that Ken Belson of the New York Times (4 Jan 2004) describes as “… something akin to the Boston Marathon, the Final Four and the Super Bowl rolled into one. More than a run for the tape, the race encapsulates the perseverance, pathos and unswerving loyalty the Japanese value so highly.”

The most mundane objects can, over time, acquire huge symbolic meaning and importance. Instead of batons, teammates in the Hakone Ekiden hand off strips of fabric. As Belsen writes:

These cloth sashes, called tasuki, are ordinarily used to tie back long kimono sleeves. But on race day, they are endowed with the power of each college’s legacy and are even blessed by teams at shrines. In effect, they embody the spirit of the race the Japanese find so appealing.

“The weight of the tasuki is heavy,” said Atsushi Miyashita, a 30-year-old businessman, who has gone to Hakone to watch the race every year since he was a boy. “It connects the runners with all those who ran before. This race is not about any one person.”

Like another relay: life…

Well, isn’t that more interesting than 11Eyes?

The Sacred Blacksmith 06

Oh boy, it’s DBZ with swords. Instead of impossibly buff guys grunting and ripping clothes off of each other, it’s a bunch of impossibly thin girls grunting and waving really big swords. Like really big.

I said to Nyoron here, “Use me!” C’mon, it was a joke; she’s not really gonna say-

Hey, what do you know?

This show is unintentionally hilarious. Okay, okay, I’ll be serious. This is very serious. Katanas are serious juju, man, don’t fuck with them. There’s some Cecily rant later in the episode about how Aria is totally not an object blah blah blah, which is kinda funny I guess ’cause the show parades her around in nothing but skimpy clothes and she literally turns into a tool for violence but HEY SHE IS NOT AN OBJECT OKAY?! But nevermind that–that’s boring stuff and we don’t care about that. We care about katanas and how fucking cool they are.

Wasn’t that fucking cool?

Awesome. I couldn’t do that with some shitty sword. I would need a… katana.

This fine gentleman also has a video about surviving the zombie apocalypse. Should you find yourself in New Orleans with naught but a trusty katana and your laptop, be sure to watch that fine video! So far there’s only a part one, but I’m sure part two will be out in just a year’s time for practically the same price and content!

And no, The Sacred Blacksmith’s plot still sucks.

Kampfer 06

Nothing could be more fitting for this anime. As for the rest of the show–oh shit, Top Chef is on now and I’m missing it. I guess we’ll have to end here. What a pity.