neko's thinkbox

TSUKAI FURUSARETA 'AISHITERU MO'

Reminds me, I still need to catch up to Yakitate!! Japan. …wait, I already did long time ago. Crikey.

As predicted, I had a wonderful week-end… outside of my room, mainly. And I quite like it. :P

So yeah, delays and stuff, and yet another week breaks in this fall season… either way, here is -finally- the last batch, with Sora no Otoshimono, Letter Bee, The Sacred Blacksmith, Railgun, Winter Sonata and Yumeiro Patissiere. Late comer: Kaidan Restaurant swiftly joined the fun, too.

Enjoy!

List of series in Part 3:

• Sora no Otoshimono
• Tegami Bachi – Letter Bee
• Seiken no Blacksmith
• To Aru Majutsu no Choudenjibou (Railgun)
• Winter Sonata
• Yumeiro Patissiere
• Kaidan Restaurant

Sora no Otoshimono

Sigh...

Sigh…

Ah yeah, the “genie pooped out of a black hole” plot. Can fulfill any wishes. Grant 1 billion Yen. Control time. Commit genocide. Load a save game. Basically, Icarus is a big-breasted developer’s console of the world with a dog-collar.
That’s great. The fact that Tomoki can dominate such an exploitable tool implies that there is some underlying plot, I guess it would be something about more x-class Angelroids running wild, waiting to spawn out of the black hole onto random victims, and end up being a Battle Royale on conflicting interests, finishing with an epic Deus Ex Machina.
It has great animation and design, too! And Icarus reminds me of Chii, too!^[1] So, will I watch on?
 
Guess not.

And that is mainly because of the fanservice. Tomoki’s boner sceneGirl, you are so freakin’ stupid. Go to school. Get some common sense. Get a clue., albeit utterly realistic, just made me :rolleyes: and the rest of the episode didn’t help either. Big boobs, pantsu, exhibitionism (thank god for censors!), bondage et al., we’re on to something here. Something old and boring. Supposedly, the next episodes will dump in some more of those mindlessly innocent angels in all colors and shapes to cater to every taste out there.
One more to the Harem category. Well, that is if Tomoki grows some balls and actually DOES something to his girls. But he can’t. Because he’s just another wimpy lead. In fact, all of the characters so far are shallow and boring. The Yakuza prez, the autistic otaku genius, the violent childhood friend, the immature, perverted, indecisive lead… Been there, seen that.
Yes, you might tell me to watch at least the second episode, because, Sora no Otoshimono might be able to manage to save the plot a little, or whatever, but I’m just not keen on watching the boobage ramble about for six hours only to get second-rate romance, slapstick and the occasional moral questions on omnipotence and shit.
 
Watching: No.
 Damn pantsu.:rolleyes: I think I’m getting boss-eyed from all the rolling.

Tegami Bachi – Letter Bee

Ah, here’s a series that already impresses me with its opening. Great animation, crisp details, beautiful design and contrasty colors – and, best of all, it remains fairly consistent throughout the whole episode. So it already scored points on presentation and visual richness. But now the most important thing: story. How well did it fare?

The job of a postman, unless you’re one of Brittania’s proud Royal Fail blokes, is usually quite boring. And normally, you aren’t required to fight monsters and deplete the ammunition of your soul/heart to see to the safe arrival of the letters. Or the parcels. Or human beings.
But beyond Gauche Suede’s unorthodox execution of his job as a Letter Bee, and the delivery (escort) of Lag Seeing to his destination, it’s the story that fascinates me.

With every hit of the Shindan Pistol, both Gauche and Lag recollect fragments of each others’ past – it is very interesting to see how these people with different backgrounds and experience can relate to a stranger’s past.
Gauche reminds me so much of Dan JD of Basquash! with his motivation to go to the capital to earn money and afford to heal his sister’s legs (and I wonder what caused her to be like that.) His memories also reveal that he has a friend, Aria Link (nice name!) with whom he seems to be very friendly.
On the other end, Lag’s story points out that there might be a plot in the making, with the abduction of his mother by shady people from the capital.

For some reason, I just felt that everything in this episode was in perfect harmony and balance, and I almost cannot find any fault with it. All in all, Tegami Bachi did great, much much better than the average Fall ‘09 series. Signed, stamped, mailed. Run, Gauche.
 
Watching: Yes.
Blogging: Likely.

Seiken no Blacksmith

Hmm. This kind of felt RPG-ish, most probably because of the stock medieval setting and events, although it did not really catch my attention in the beginning. I was on the verge of being bored, especially by the focus on Cecily’s metal breast plate with those two globular shapesRight. I bet (hope) they are smaller than that. in it, and other eye-(un)candyWoops! That was such an (un)accident! visuals, even a defunct clothes filter…siiiigh. was used!

So yeah, I was about to drop it early. The action was okay, but felt a little poorly animated. The premise seemed quite meh too – young girl with tons of ideals, heir to the family, inherited a crappy sword, became a knight but is a poor fighter etc – and the young, arrogant stud with the unbreakable sword, accompanied by a loli.
No depth at all, but for some reason I lasted until the end. Despite the thing where Cecily deflects/protects Luke from those ice projectiles with her mere breasts. And despite that other thing where she yelled out her name, rank and status and expounding her ideals for about one minute – quite the patient monster there.

However, in the end, I actually found something that kindled my interest: Luke’s forging. At first I thought he was some kind of talented Blacksmith with some innate ability, uber skilled hands, or extreme magic tools – but no, the only thing he needs is a piece of steel, a hilt, and that Lisa loli. And the rest is done with magic, though it just doesn’t happen like that, he has to enumerate every single process of the making of a katana blade (and probably go through it all within his mind as well). I was quite impressed, because, man, that’s quite a long list of tasks, and it sure must have been quite hot inside that orb. For a long time – quite the patient monster there.

But that little detail is not what will make me watch this series yet. We’ll see at the end of the season if I got enough room to marathon it.
 
Watching: No.

To Aru Majutsu no Choudenjibou (Railgun)

Still the old Misaka. Although that’s perhaps why this anime doesn’t strike me as original/interesting anymore?

Making an anime just for the sake of making an anime. Is what I thought after this first episode of Railgun. I thought the side story was great in a manga, but to turn even that into an anime is just pretentious. Unless J.C. Staff comes up with an interesting plot, I’m not sure if I should expect anything more than the uninteresting lesbian hullabaloo around the series’ flagship, Misaka Mikoto.

Sure, she’s quite the popular girl out there with her underlying tsundere traits and her tremendous power, and I’m sure more than one guy would want to be tazed by her (go figure, masochists), but that’s about it as far as I can see. It’s just her and her crony Kuroko, who still has that creepy and annoying voice of an 80yo granny. And who keeps fondling Mikoto’s perfectly-sized breastsTeleportation has never been this useful..

I liked To Aru Majutsu no Index, and I am looking forward to the second series, but I’m not particularly fond of Railgun, at least the anime doesn’t interest me one bit for now. Guess I will wait until the season/series ends to decide whether I will watch it whole or not. But for now, pass.
 
Watching: No.
 
By the way, I found this particular sceneSay hey hey Shin chan! to be reminiscent of the Crayon Shin-chan anime… can anyone relate to that?

Winter Sonata

This anime left quite a good impression on me. Joon Sang, doomed to go blind due to a cerebral condition, runs away from Korea to New York, not to drag his lover, Yoo Jin, down alongside him in his despair, sparing her from all those troubles. Yoo Jin, deciding not to follow him, goes to Paris. In their respective locations, both of them keep a very taciturn correspondence in a quite harmonious and emotionally packed story.

The thing that marked me most was not that the whole thing was in Korean, but that there was very little dialogue apart from their elliptical thoughts. I liked it since it gave the whole a nice, melancholic effect. Mind, I only watched Episode 00 – the “prologue” so to speak – so I don’t know whether it will be any different in the next episodes though. Nevertheless, I can see that the overall production quality (design, animation, execution, music) is quite high, higher than many contemporary Japanese anime.^[2]

I’m interested to know how well it is received in Japan – after all, it would seem to me as if foreign-produced anime are a rarity to Japanese people, and these people having to watch this anime with subtitles sure would disconcert many of them, right? Well I don’t mind since I’m already used to it anyway. But what would they say to the quality of this anime, given that half of them already zapped away because they didn’t get their pantsu or moe fix here?

Bottom line, it was quite beautiful as a one-shot. And judging from the preview, it might probably show the whole past they spent together since their first encounter. Not sure what exactly to expect genre-wise apart from romance and bits of school life, but it is very captivating. I might follow this one.
 
Watching: Likely
Blogging: No.

Yumeiro Patissiere

90 Euros! That's quite expensive for the few small pieces of cake...

90 Euros! That’s quite expensive for the few small pieces of cake…

And just when I expected something very girly and sugarcoated, I actually got something quite surprising.

I don’t think I’ve been much into the cuter parts of the shoujo genre. At least I tried avoiding the overly… giant eyes and diabetes-inducing visuals, with success so far. But now with Yumeiro Pâtĩssíèrě, I wonder if I can keep it up. At least this first episode makes me want to have some more desserts.
The design is typically of shoujo stock, reminding me mainly of Arina Tanemura (e.g. Full Moon wo Sagashite) and Maki Yoko’s style (Aishiteruze Baby), with many Toudou Izumi elements (concerning the faeries and stuff).

But looking away from all the sweet stuff, there is quite some interesting stuff going on in here, even though it feels quite rehashed: Ichigo is a girl without any apparent qualities, and has always stood in the shadow of her talented sister Natsume, but of course, she has a hidden specialty she inherited from her grandmother: she has got an excellent sense of taste.
This is the usual encouragement moral for the early time slot of the day, something that might inspire a lot of children with learning troubles and/or who feel envious of their kin, to find their own preference and/or specialty, etc. And the option provided is not something totally intangible (if you can omit the magic faeries (which might act as some kind of taste-enhancersif grated onto the cake)): confectionery. Grab a couple of recipes and go mental on sugar and co. Kind of like in Yakitate!! Japan.

This said, I am pretty sure I won’t watch Yumeiro Pâtissière for quite a while, maybe even until it’s finished. Because I won’t be able to take all the sugar. …then again, I’m sure I couldn’t stand three episodes of this in a row without needing a double dose of insulin either… We’ll see.
 
Watching: No, but I would if I felt like baking cakes right now.

Kaidan Restaurant

Breaking News! Ghost caught on tape! Who ya gonna call!

Breaking News! Ghost caught on tape! Who ya gonna call!

Kaidan Restaurant trickled in late this afternoon^[3] just before getting around to Winter Sonata, so I quickly added it to this already lengthy post. So, here’s another child-oriented series to wrap up this Fall season impression sweep.

This first episode introduced the characters and the setting, and told two large and one small stories involving the characters. Nothing really out of the norm, but once again, I’m surprised at how passionate I was in watching this. I sat through all these mild horror stories with a certain interest. I can’t explain why. Because usually, I tend to laugh at horror stories: the worse they are (in telling, seriousness, or presentation), the funnier I find them. Then again, I rarely watch/read horror anyway so I can’t really tell about it. I found these stories quite amusing though. Besides, that blond guy coming straight from the HJ sure has an interesting aura. I bet he’s some kind of ghost himself.

There’s also this other thing about me: if you ask me to tell you a story, funny or horror or whatever, I probably wouldn’t be able to come up with anything. Watching such small stories that are easy to remember might help expand my repertoire… Okay, I’m grasping at straws here.

Perhaps I’m just in the mood to watch something light that’s not all too serious, but doesn’t fall into the usual fanservice/slapstick latrine pit. And that what this kind of anime, directed at younger children, usually do.
 
Watching: Likely, heh.
Blogging: No.

I can’t believe I managed to finish my first impressions within 2 weeks, despite all those massive distractions out there!

So, my pick for this season would be:

• Aoi Bungaku
• Kaidan Restaurant
• Kimi ni Todoke
• Kuuchuu Buranko
• Nyan Koi
• Tegami Bachi
• Winter Sonata,

to list only the definite watches. Others may or may not follow – but even so, it’s already quite a handful, and I am pretty sure that I might end up backlogging on some (if not all) of these shows. In any case, I’m sure I will catch up to any of these shows soon, and give a mid-season review of the best ones.

I hope you enjoyed reading my (belated) first impressions of this season’s anime, and I hope it triggered your curiosity for some series, which I would like to hear about! Similarly, do toss in some feedback if you agree or disagree with any of these views.

Thanks for reading!

1. Whom I loved because she smiled so often. And had smaller breasts. [↩]
2. In fact, I thought this was a Japanese production until I got suspicious after hearing the Opening song which is in Korean… Yay for being unbiased. [↩]
3. Didn’t notice this series at all before gg released it… [↩]