The anime lineup is back in full-force but really to no avail. ‘Cause honestly, Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru! would be great as a neo-noir. You could perhaps emulate something like Brick. Shougo has to save a girl from the seedy underworld of illicit file… sharing. Uh, he then finds out that the femme fatale, the woman he has fallen in love with, is actually his sister! Forget it, Shougo, it’s Akihabara. Unfortunately, we get a flaccid harem comedy instead.
In other news, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate and Eureka Seven: AO also make their return and thus remind me why I didn’t really care for them in the first place.
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13. Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate Ep. 5-6 — Last week: unranked
Other candidates have actual platforms. On the other hand, the main character trips and gets a bloodied nose. He then goes on a rant about saving his precious club. Then for the second half of the episode, people sit around a laptop and watch a number go up. So riveting. Oh, I’m talking about my defibrillator. My doctor advises me to keep one nearby whenever I’m watching this anime.
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12. Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai E. 7 — Last week: 10
The harem lead and his harem take a visit to the otherworld which is apparently just like our world except with a piss-colored filter over everything. This episode also marks the triumphant return of info-dumping. Oh, what’s that? The characters are busy flying through the air and have nothing to do? That’s okay. Just stare at their panties while we lull you to sleep about the details you never asked for. Then a little later, the villain decides to have an info-dumping conversation of his own with the childhood friend, because that’s what evil-doers do: make small-talk with their captives. As for the rest of the episode, we’ll just leave that to a future Harem Hill (if there’s even going to be one).
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11. Hagure Yuusha no Estetica Ep. 7 — Last week: 9
All of a sudden, we open with a group of medieval-looking folks planning to kidnap and eliminate the demon king’s daughter. Intriguing? Maybe. Good thing this is just a prelude to a beach episode. Yay. You might think the anime is trying to turn the tables on the main character a bit by having a competition at the beach to steal his swimming trunks — yes, that is the competition — but we all know Ousawa’s too badass to lose. The only funny moment in the entire episode is in the screencap above.
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10. Kuroko’s Basketball Ep. 20 — Last week: 5
Boring episode. The only enjoyment I could take away from the show this week was its piss-poor animation. Look at the guy in the pink shirt. Look!
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9. Arcana Famiglia Ep. 8 — Last week: 6
I just view everything in the show as fanfiction fodder now. It’s impossible to take the show seriously anymore. Take the screenshot above, for instance. The typically seme Debito is now totally uke! Oh what fun! I gotta capture this on paper now! Jolly used to experiment on Pace, Debito and Luca? Oh ho ho ho. What sort of experiments? They can’t actually defy him for some reason? Just more juicy potential there, fanfiction writers! I’m sorry — am I kink-shaming?
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8. Eureka Seven: AO Ep. 16 — Last week: unranked
It’s amazing how neutral I am about this show. I don’t hate it, because the production quality is obviously top-notch and the story isn’t dumb. At the same time, however, I don’t love it. Case in point, when Team Goldilocks disappears, it doesn’t even register with me. I knew nothing about them except that they were really young-looking girls. What does it matter to me then that they’re suddenly missing? But that’s the problem: Ao is really torn up about the whole situation. He’s completely distraught over the fact that no one at Generation Bleu can even remember who those girls were. Unfortunately, I can’t feel his desperation because I never connected with Team Goldilocks in the first place. In fact, I’ve never really connected with any of the show’s characters. So if any of them were to suddenly disappear in a similar fashion, I’m not sure I’d mind either. Let’s start with Naru.
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7. Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru! Ep. 5 — Last week: unranked
The magic’s gone; our Imouto is no longer creepy and subversive. Instead, we’re just going to settle into the mundane routine of exploring each girl’s past. Y’know, basic harem story structure. I’ll pass. I don’t care about the Nagato Yuki ripoff.
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6. Sword Art Online Ep. 7 — Last week: 4
My thoughts are here. I also learned that people really enjoyed this episode. Even if it was a dumb story, apparently the adaptation is faithful. I guess that’s all that matters; anime fans are easy to please.
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5. Tari Tari Ep. 8 — Last week: 7
Ahaha, this is exactly what I was talking about last week. Wakana lost her mom. She’ll never have the chance to see her mom again. Meanwhile, Sawa is whining that she can’t grow up to be a horse jockey. Boy, I bet she feels like a jackass now. No, you’re right –people should be allowed to feel bad about their predicaments even if someone else has it worse. For example, am I not allowed to be sad over my pet dying just because some kid is starving in Africa?
That’s not really the point I’ve been harping on, though. I’m talking in terms of storytelling execution. The point, then, is that you go from one super sad story to… well, Sawa’s problem. The juxtaposition makes it really hard to take her seriously. No one likes having their dreams crushed, but with Wakana’s pair of episodes still fresh in our minds, Sawa comes off a little… spoiled. I really have to wonder why, then, did Wakana get her time in the spotlight first when it’s going to be this hard to top?
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4. Campione! Ep. 7 — Last week: 6
Of all the harem shows this season, I guess I have to give Campione! credit for actually being a harem. Godou (will) actually get to kiss each and everyone of his haremettes (the kiss gives him magical powers), and he shares one with Yuri this week. Hell, Erica even refers to herself as his first wife and the rest of the girls as secondary wives or whatever. Does this fact make Campione! a good anime? Hell no. But y’know, between shows where the guy and the girl(s) are too shy to even hold hands (e.g. 99% of the harem anime out there) and shows where physical intimacy basically equates to sexual harassment (e.g. Hagure Yuusha no Estetica), sharing a kiss is almost origina– no, it’s not. This anime still sucks.
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3. Binbou-gami ga! — Last week: 3
I’m not even going to touch the discussion on gender roles and expectations in this week’s episode. I watch the show for gems like the Fist of the North Star gag you see above. I can live without everything else.
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2. Kokoro Connect Ep. 7 — Last week: 2
Well, I’ve already written extensively about the episode here. So has anything changed since that post? Not really. It just struck me that with our latest arc, perhaps the kids should go and talk to a psychiatrist. Is there patient-doctor confidentiality in Japan too? Oh well, you don’t have to mention the Heartseed. I’d have to imagine that just talking about your repressed desires would help immensely. But I guess no one’s gonna do that, huh? What’s the social stigma surrounding mental health like in Japan? Anybody have any experience in this matter?
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1. Natsuyuki Rendezvous — Last week: 1
In-depth post here. Looks like we’re nearing the final stretch, but if an anime owns, and nobody is around to see it, does it still own?
This will probably sound egoistic, but I would love to read posts on Eureka Seven AO. But perhaps you don’t have much to say about it?
Well, that was what I was trying to get at. Even with shows that I consider to be worse than E7:AO, like SAO (it’s only ranked higher because I’m more interested in watching another episode of it), inspires me to say something. E7:AO doesn’t make me want to say anything. And when I read what others have to say about the show, I’m just like “Uh, okay….”
Hah, well, I can understand you~
AO is kinda annoying since it withholds information on purpose.
Well it’s good to know I’m not the only one.
It’s downright supernatural how little I care about what’s happening in AO, yet the reasons are extremely elusive. This isn’t a Mouryo no Hakko or a Mouretsu Pirates where I can point to some element (or the lack of one) to explain why I have so little investment.
I really enjoyed the original Eureka Seven for dozens of reasons. There are a few elements of AO I like. There is also a massive fucking void of total apathy between them that refuses to abate no matter what transpires each week. The biggest mystery in the series isn’t the Secrets or the Scub Coral – it’s why I don’t give a fraction of a damn about them.
Its soul is forfeit. No mortal may love it. The executive producer of AO was Mephistophiles. I… I can’t think of any other explanation!
It’s crazy how people are almost orgasmic about the show on Twitter. When a new episode comes out, people are blown away by it and I’m just sitting here going, “Wuh?” Time and time again, it just goes back to the characters for me. They’re so flat that I really wouldn’t care if they were killed off. Then we have the mystery. I think it’s too much a central focus in the show. Granted, we didn’t know much about the Coralians at the same point in the first season either, but I don’t think they emerged as the focal point until later on. Rather, the focal point was on Renton and Eureka, especially the former’s ability to fit into an adult environment. Ao doesn’t quite have to go through the same problems, and on paper, that’s fine. I wouldn’t want Ao to go through the exact same situations as Renton, but again, he doesn’t really have a struggle that isn’t also related to the Scub Coral and the Secrets. So right off the bat, we focus on the those concepts. Unfortunately, this has been going on since the start of the season so the mystery has been drawn out to, I think, its limits. I don’t really feel as though we’re making progress with each episode, so I’m finding it hard to keep my interest level up.
Isn’t all the SAO eps until now are just side stories that doesn’t have to do with the plot? Not sure why they do those first, probably set the atmosphere but I think this coming week is where the anime actually head towards the main plot from the light novel.
Main plot or not, still gotta be good.
Agreed with the top 3 as usual. Can’t comment on anything else because the top 3 are all I’m watching. Re Binbougami, I would actually love to hear you elaborate on the matter of gender roles and expectations in that episode. I spent a lot of it rolling my eyes but the conclusion caught me off-guard a bit. Didn’t expect her to just decide she was actually happy the way she was, and I guess it felt like a pleasant surprise after everything else unfolded so predictably.
Well, I dunno. Most of the episode spewed pretty obnoxious ideas, so I’m always a little wary about a quick ending changing anything.
Oh, agreed, I was thinking of the ending more as damage mitigation rather than actually making up for anything. I don’t deny that the majority of the episode was pretty obnoxious and that no ending was going to make up for that.
Watching Arcana still feels like I walked in on the middle of something and it’s just getting to be kind of unbearable….I mean if the whole purpose of this was the stupid tournament, WHY DRAG IT OUT? I just don’t get why they think people wanna see more half-assed romance between people who clearly don’t have the balls to do anything with or to each other. Is it really just that easy for people to identify with? Why try and fit so many elements into a show if none of them are even done well? The action scenes are boring, the romance goes nowhere, the whole over-arching premise of the story so far has gone nowhere, the origin of the Arcana powers is completely irrelevant and Felicita herself, as the main character, is lifeless. Seriously, what could this entire show even be for? I’m basically just still watching to find out….
Arcana Famiglia doesn’t surprise me much; it’s what I would’ve expected from a shoujo. My biggest qualms — other than that it sucks, of course — is that her love interests feel like creepy older men.
Yeah honestly…more than the guys they’re trying to paint as the obvious creep and the obvious antagonist, like you said last week, Luca is just…I don’t know about him. I mean it’s not like an attendant is a position of power over the person when the person is as ear-splittingly passive as Felicita is, but something about Luca is more off-putting than Debito and…that other alchemist guy. I mean of course if they made the show from Luca’s perspective rather than Liberta and Nova’s, they’d somehow make it seem like it was meant to be, but…his rape-face you screenshotted in the last ranking just solidifies it….