A bi-weekly look at some anime and various other anime-related nonsense.
*****
Yosuga no Sora Ep. 1-6
• The breasts in this show are (NSFW warning) udderly ridiculous. What are they drinking out there in the countryside?
• The hyper-jealous, creepy, needy, internet-obsessed recluse harboring incestuous fantasies is the frail and clumsy sister. The brother, on the other hand, is the amazingly responsible caregiver, but he’s also an inadvertent uber-ladykiller (despite having the same pathetic inflection as every other harem lead) at the same time. Could anime pander any harder?
• “Are you worried and frustrated with the way your father is using your half-sister only for political gains? I’ve got a solution! Let’s play whack-a-mole!!!” One step closer to an H-scene. *fist pump*
• After Kazuha’s arc is Akira — yes, her half-sister. The anime only seems to get smuttier and smuttier with each passing episode.
• When Haru made a move so early in the anime, we were hoping he’d try to score with all the girls and make his twin sister go nuts and kill him a la School Days. We’re always hoping that every harem would turn into School Days.
*****
Otome Youkai Zakuro Ep. 1-6
Set in an alternate Japan, it is the Meiji Era and the Gregorian calendar has just come into effect. Fox-eared girls are put to work together with a delegation of young human soldiers, to promote interracial understanding. However, Zakuro’s strong personality collides with human sensibilities.
• Every time the topic of racism is broached in anime, they always dance around it by making up some ridiculous fox-eared race or catgirl race or whatever the fuck instead of just having the guts to deal with racism head-on.
• Holy shit, it’s the Asian Scooby Doo!
• Why do we have a problem with fox-eared girls and talking dogs? Because what makes racism so particularly infuriating is that it’s really just (for the most part) skin-deep. By having such physiologically distinct races in OYZ, any message the anime might have loses much of its impact.
• Like the candle-eating faux pas by Kei — imagine some clueless twit going up to a black person and saying, “Hey, I read in some books that you people just love fried chicken so I bought you some!” This is clearly offensive as all hell, but when ‘black person’ becomes ‘half-spirit’ and ‘fried chicken’ becomes ‘candle,’ the example loses all of its potency.
• If the objection is that OYZ‘s logic doesn’t apply to the real world and only to its special world of spirits and half-spirits, then it is utterly useless.
• Let’s play a game using this flowchart. Do it for Zakuro and see what you get. We got ‘Mary Sue.’
• Fin finds the scene between Susukihotaru and Riken early in ep. 4 to be super contrived. The anime goes to such length to justify having the poor girl stay several steps behind the big, strong, broad-backed man. Why? For protection.
It’s romantic!
• What is wrong with your face?!
• We were vaguely bored of Zakuro as the lead, but the side characters are even less compelling.
• To sum things up, throughout the anime, Zakuro is close to speaking out against the blatant racism, but she held back each time ’cause it’d make Spirit Affairs look bad or something. Let’s not, however, forget those important words uttered by a great man: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
• But instead, we’ll have Kei come by and save the day so that Zakuro can cry into his chest. Tsuntsun to deredere in mere seconds.
*****
Psychic Detective Yakumo Ep. 4-6
• We learn that Yakumo’s mother tried to kill him when he was younger.
• The plot for every mystery: Haruka gets into trouble, Yakumo saves her, she falls harder for him, repeat.
• DUN DUN DUN Yakumo’s father is the villain.
Yawn.
*****
Fortune Arterial Ep. 1-6
• Nothing happens.
• It’s even more boring than Twilight. Yes, I went there.
*****
Shinryaku! Ika Musume
• What a coincidence — two series featuring tentacled sea creatures.*
• I hear squid ink is delicious, but I haven’t had the chance to try it. This?
Probably not so much.
• It’s one of those aimless slice-of-life anime. It’s innocent at least.
• Nyoro’n thinks it’s a perfectly okay anime to have in the background while she does her programming projects. That’s a pretty specific requirement!
* I originally made the egregious error of (inadvertently) equating a jellyfish to a squid — my bad. Thankfully, the KING OF NIGERIA was here to set me right. He’s an alright guy. You should read his emails. Boy, has he got a proposal for you.
*****
Bakuman Ep. 4-6
• Did you know Bakuman (manga) actually has its own wiki?
• Mashiro laments that being a serious mangaka requires so much time. He says this, however, while lounging in a children’s playground with his best buddy. Well played, man. GG.
• Gender relations in Japan according to anime:
Smooth.
• A story about a blind pitcher is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. No, wait… a blind F1 racer would probably be worse, but ‘blind pitcher’ is up there!
• “Take that, Mom~ an 85! Impressed? Of course not!”
“Men get test scores that a woman wouldn’t understand! *snort snort*”
• Hmm…
• “Yeah, she doesn’t give a shit what I do anymore. She’s a good mom.”
• Episode 6 must have been real cheap for JC Staff to animate.
• In the previous post about Bakuman, we wondered whether or not they’d ever show Azuki’s relentless passion to be a seiyu. We got five seconds. Five whole seconds!
*****
Around the web:
This is where I take a look at some of the stuff that caught my eye on blogs I happen to glance at every now and then.
• Panty & Stocking as an anime is certainly fresh in a sea of lookalikes, but not everyone finds it funny. adaywithoutme, among other things, wonders why the anime is nevertheless compelling. I disagree, however, that the anime is mostly toilet humor.
• Has there been a change in the anime community and what it chooses to watch? IWICSYI gropes for an answer while rambling at the same time about his anime convention experiences.
• “Tantei Opera Milky Holmes is to moe as Evangelion was to mecha” — Landon‘s eye-catching opener to his article on that other JC Staff anime didn’t exactly lead to the conclusion I thought it would. Is Milky Holmes really better than it appears? Do I even have the stomach to find out?
• It’s more than a couple weeks old by now, but Snark has always been way snarkier about moe anime than we’ve ever been here. Too bad he’s even more infrequent with his updates than we are.
Moe Sucks 
“A story about a blind pitcher is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
Its fine. After all, baseball is the game with the dumbest rules i’ve ever heard. See ? Perfect fit.
Among the many reasons why it’s dumb, pitchers need to able to see signs from their catchers.
You know, I have my tag surfer set to anime only. And I saw the screenshots to Psychic Detective Yakumo and thought there was no way it would spoil anything for me since I have read the manga. (Which was short, but really good.)
Anyway, where the hell are they pulling this stuff from??? I wonder how long they plan to make the series? Because seriously, his dad is a villain? In the manga, it’s just him and her, a few different investigations. You only get a little info on his background, from what he tells her, that’s it. And she starts to like him as a person but it’s not really romantic at all. It has a slight hint that it could grow to be romantic, if the series were continued, which unfortunately it wasn’t. :(
Anyway, just thought I’d say my piece there. Totally shocked. It makes me want to watch the anime to see what they changed, but it makes me not want to watch it because it won’t be what it’s supposed to be… hmm…
Shrug. They had some silly staredown across the riverbank. All of a sudden, Yakumo drops the bomb out of nowhere:
Maybe the subs I downloaded are wrong, but you’re not the first person to tell me that the manga is way different.
Edit: I added in the screencap of the revelation into the post just to be sure I wasn’t seeing things.
>• What a coincidence — two series featuring jellyfishes this season.
But squids aren’t jellyfish. >:
My mistake. I’ve fixed it.
Oh, you’re finally back, E Minor?
Have you been watching Shiki? I disagree that messages of discrimination lose their poignancy when they aren’t literally attached to skin-colour, but I believe Shiki is doing a much better job with this theme then either Otome Yōkai Zakuro or Ōkami Kakushi from a few seasons back.
Well, let’s say I read a book about cats. The book tells me that cats enjoy catnip. As a result, I go and buy catnip for my pet. Am I being racist? Of course not. Cats are anatomically and physiologically different from human beings. It isn’t offensive to assume that some book is right about cats enjoying catnip.
What are spirits and half-spirits? I don’t know, but it’s safe to say they’re probably not anatomically and physiologically close to human beings either (maybe the half-spirits are but I still don’t know). When someone assumes a black person will just enjoy fried chicken, it’s silly because your skin color shouldn’t dictate your preferences. But the differences between spirits and humans are more than skin deep. For all I know, maybe they do enjoy eating candles. The point isn’t that all stereotyping is bad, but discrimination is bad. I’m not sure if there was any discrimination in offering Zakuro a candle. As a result, the candle-eating scene in OYZ has no message at all. If anything, Zakuro seems like a jerk for blowing up at Kei. I’m not saying that the anti-racism message is completely nullified in OYZ, but for at least the candle-eating example, I do think it loses a bit of oomph.
No, I haven’t seen Shiki. There seems to be a lot of catching up to do from the looks of it so I’m not sure if I’ll have the time.
Squid ink is delicious! If you aren’t convinced then I guess I’ll have to throw in a post I made for it.
http://rainbowsphere.oniichannoecchi.com/archives/3622
It probably is, but I’m a visual person as much as any and it doesn’t really look palatable. Same reason that I still refuse to try balut.