4:09 AM: I can’t really get to sleep but yet I’m still exhausted somehow. I know what’ll help: anime. The following shows looked kinda bad — like walking into a cheap Chinese buffet bad — but I guess you should try everything at least once.
Dragon Crisis!
4:10 AM: We open the story with a naked protagonist being visited by Casper the friendly ghost in his dreams. What a hook.
He has no childhood friend to wake him up though. That’s so sad~
4:14 AM: Ryuji has a seat by the window and it’s to his left. Pervy best friend makes an entrance. Other than waking up by his lonesome, this is following the formula by the T.
4:16 AM: Eriko’s a second cousin, not a first. Let’s get it straight. Not that it matters, cough.
4:20 AM: Eriko covers the entire screen in red butterflies or something then the anime jump cuts to the men in suits lying lifeless on the ground. You literally can’t see a damn thing.
This lack of effort already in the first episode isn’t very promising.
4:22 AM: Dragon girl finally makes her appearance and she’s blessed enough to be clothed. I’m mildly surprised, but she’ll still go nude by the end of the episode. You can bet on it.
Nevertheless, she contorts herself ethereally for a few painful seconds.
4:24 AM: She acts like a dog. Ugh.
4:26 AM: Whaddaya know? He cooks. Harem leads are so talented nowadays.
4:27 AM: 17 minutes into the episode and Fang is nude already.
The framing here reminds me of the scene in Signs when the alien dashed by an alleyway except this time it’s an illegal dragon and Chris Hansen’s knocking on your door.
She growls like a dog too. Oh, I’m sorry — she’s a dragon. How could I not recognize that those red, shiny stuff on her arms are bonafide dragon scales. On a human. Who still has hair.
4:28 AM: He has to spoonfeed her too. Welp, I’m done with this shit. Look at her eyes:
Too much of a creepy Chobits-y vibe.
Maybe someone’s gonna tell me that’s exactly what they were going for. I don’t really care. I’m not going there again.
4:36 AM: Okay, let’s try something else.
Kore wa Zombie desu ka
4:37 AM: It looks like the protagonist of this anime had to wake himself up too. So, so sad. He’s not alone though, at least. He has some live-in mute.
Oh, would you look at that. He has a seat by the window and the window is to his… left!
Oops, wrong harem. They all kinda blend together after a certain point.
4:39 AM: His penis is the sun. This says everything right here.
4:40 AM: Some scrolling text has to tell me not to leap in front of a truck. Thanks. I was totally gonna try it.
4:41 AM: More scrolling text. I wouldn’t have known I was watching a fantasy sequence otherwise ’cause I’m retarded. I watch anime after all.
4:47 AM: Annnnd copious female nudity and we’re only ten minutes in. If there was a race to strip girls down to their birthday suits, you… Kore wa Zombie desu ka… you totally win. /golfclap
I guess her clothes were magic, including her underwear, but certainly not her chainsaw. That’s not magic, nope.
4:48 AM: We cut immediately to everyone in his living room. When did he get his lower half reattached? How did he get her there? You usually notice a nude girl walking down the street. She’s wearing panties now. I guess he just had a pair lying around despite living alone with no parents or siblings.
4:52 AM: I didn’t know zombies couldn’t walk in the daylight.
But then again, I didn’t know vampires could sparkle.
4:53 AM: We had it all wrong. It’s not quality, it’s quantity:
4:55 AM: This screenshot needs no context.
4:58 AM: Nor this:
5:12 AM: I’ve got class in five hours and I still haven’t fallen asleep yet. But hey, why not one more. Take a deep breath.
Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne
5:13 AM: This show has what the two previous show lacked: a waking up scene. Tradition: you can’t beat it.
I dunno if my blood pressure can withstand all these radical differences though.
5:16 AM: Hey, did you notice those panty shots?
Did you?
I don’t think you did. HERE YOU GO.
5:19 AM: After that OP, why on earth are we being coy with the panty shots now?
5:20 AM: Is it supposed to be hard to tell the two apart here?
5:28 AM: Despite the oh so scandalous (not really) incest angle, this anime is really boring.
5:29 AM: And the anime chickens out anyway: Nao’s adopted.
It’s not even a bad OreImo clone. OreImo had pride (for whatever reason). There’s even some earnestness in it, for whatever that’s worth. Like Jarmusch once said, there is no originality in art, but the least one could do is strive for authenticity. It’s just the first episode, but Oniichan no Koto doesn’t seem to have its own voice yet. It just feels like a bad Kiss x Sis clone that got beaten horribly by an ugly stick. Maybe later episodes will surprise me, but what are the chances of that?
5:36 AM: Personally, the zombie show is probably the most watchable but that doesn’t say a whole lot. I’m still a little deader inside. Maybe I’ll just skip classes today.
4:27 AM: You ruined that scene for me entirely.
What are your thoughts on ‘Signs’ by the way? It would probably yield a better discussion than any of these shows.
I like Signs. I think of it as the last good movie Shyamalan ever made. I like it a whole lot more than I did when it first came out. I was in high school then, and I usually nitpicked the details: “Isn’t it stupid that aliens are invading a planet like Earth when they’re weak to water?” Being a smug atheist back then, I also didn’t identify much with the father’s loss of faith and subsequent regaining of it by the movie’s end.
Signs comes off a lot better to me now. I’m not hung up on the ending anymore, so much that I’m oblivious to the real strength of the movie. I understand that the alien invasion is really just a backdrop to a larger plot about a man trying to repair his fractured family life. The identities, motivations, and weaknesses of the aliens are largely irrelevant.
Plus, the movie was pretty tense and that’s usually a weakness for a lot of horror films.
Isn’t it great, having interest in anime?
These type of anime make me die a little more inside…